


The Marriage of True Minds

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forced Bonding, Forced Marriage, M/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:17:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 50
Words: 204,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucius curses Harry and Draco into a forced marriage. They're only required to live together, not <em>be</em> together, and so they try to date other people. But over time, things change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a forced bonding story, and probably won't appeal if you aren't a fan of that. The title comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

If Harry had ever listened to Hermione, he would have known better than to open the small package the white raven presented to him, or he would at least have known to check for charms and curses first.

But he was running late for a date with Ginny, and tired, and no one had tried to kill him in almost two months. He cast only the most desultory spells and then opened the box, thinking it was probably another good-luck gift from Hermione and Ron, or a new joke from George—

He caught a glimpse of a ring, a heavy metallic thing that looked as if it were braided together, with a dark stone in the center. There were two animals on top who held the stone, fanged mouth open to cradle it.

That was all he had time to see before a blast of light lifted him from his feet and carried him across the room. He vaguely felt the impact with the wall, his head ringing, his sight blurring, before he slumped to the side and lost all of it in darkness for a while. 

When he opened his eyes at a burning in his fourth left finger and found the ring firmly clasped there, while an unconscious Draco Malfoy lay not three feet away, he began to suspect that he was in trouble.

*

“No, Father, for the last time.” Draco made some effort to speak calmly. His father was an annoying, senile git who Draco suspected had gone more than slightly mad in Azkaban, but to show open disrespect to a parent was not a Malfoy tradition. Draco would show that he knew what was due his father even if his father never again showed what was due _him_. “The Ministry would only shut you up again if they found me letting you use the vaults, and they might take control of them from me entirely.”

Lucius sneered at him. “What part of ‘do this secretly’ do you not _understand_?” His cane moved in his hand, and Draco tensed; when he was younger, he had more than once seen his father change it into a snake and send it after someone. But Lucius was either less angry than he appeared or he remembered at the last moment what was due his son, because he sneered and dropped his hand again. “Let me have only the money I’ve required. It is the minimum amount necessary to bribe a member of the Wizengamot.”

Draco sighed. He did wish his mother was around to diffuse the tension, but she had left for another long session with Amelia Parkinson, Pansy’s mother. Draco hated that she found it easier to be around a friend, even an old one, than the two of them, but he could understand how she felt. “I can’t do that, Father. The risks of being found out are too great. This Wizengamot isn’t like the old one you knew. Shacklebolt has done his very best to fill it with people who _can’t_ be bribed. We might hit on one by chance, but someone else would notice that they were acting differently, and probably manage to wring the truth out of them.”

“You can’t know that,” Lucius said, and he was sneering again. Draco hated how ugly it looked on his father’s face, he really did. He hoped he hadn’t ever looked the same in Hogwarts, but he hadn’t always been near a mirror to make sure. “I know names and details and stories that you can’t imagine. I can find someone who owes me something.”

“We used up all our favors during your retrial,” Draco said steadily. “If it hadn’t been for the way Potter spoke up for us, we wouldn’t have earned back even the limited control of our vaults that we have.”

“Potter,” Lucius whispered, staring off into the distance as if the bespectacled Savior stood in front of him now. “We would have been better off without his interference.”

Draco rolled his eyes; it was relatively safe to do so, since his father was looking elsewhere. “As you say, Father,” he said. “Now, I need to meet with Hammersmith. He was making noises the other day about one of the businesses being threatened by Muggle competitors.” He turned around, automatically tapping his pocket to make sure he had his wand.

“Draco!” Lucius yelled after him. Draco winced again. It would have been beneath his father’s dignity to get out of the chair and come hobbling after him, but yelling across the width of a room wasn’t much better. Malfoy voices were made for lowered conversations, darkened corridors. “Leave without listening to me, and you will regret it.”

“I already do, Father,” Draco said, turning around. “But you know as well as I that this meeting is important, and that you can’t go.”

Lucius’s eyes traveled, burning, up and down Draco’s body, as though he expected to see some grotesque touch of Muggle blood somewhere. “My friends knew what they were doing when they rescued me,” he said. “They expected you to be the face, the _front_ , for me. Not to take over yourself.”

Draco straightened his spine, because that was going too far. “I’m cooperating with the law by doing it this way,” he said quietly. “And my own desires. Accept it, Father. Things aren’t ever going back to the days when you knelt to the Dark Lord.” He turned away again.

“Draco! I _will_ do something to make you listen!”

Draco showed his father only his back and his silence as he left.

Later, waking up with a ring on his finger three feet away from a staring Potter, Draco might have wished he had listened a bit longer.

*

“What the _fuck_?” Harry ignored the disapproving look Malfoy gave him as he scrambled to his feet. If there was any time that called for swearing, it was this, when he had somehow woken up in an unfamiliar room and there was a ring he wore that wouldn’t come off for any amount of tugging. The ring was braided from many small threads of gold, silver, and copper, and it contained two animals struggling on the top. Harry hadn’t looked at them closely, but he thought they were both snakes.

He reckoned he should try Parseltongue on them, but his major concern was escaping this room. He let his eyes rake it as Malfoy sat up behind him, hands wrapped around his temples. He groaned faintly. Harry would have felt sorry for him if he could have spared any sympathy from the stock he was using for himself.

The room had five or six walls; Harry wasn’t sure if the one that bent into a small alcove housing an ivory statuette near the fireplace should count as a separate wall or not. The fire shone and leaped on the logs, and Harry had to admit that the place was comfortably warm. The walls were either white or a sort of off-yellow that made Harry want to grit his teeth as his eyesight wavered back and forth between the colors. The floor was shaped blocks of some dark brown wood, and the furnishings consisted of only two chairs. Two doors, Harry noted, as well. He could check them for locks in a moment.

“Potter, wait!”

Harry ignored him and began to move across the floor, drawing his wand. If Malfoy was mixed up in this somehow, listening to him could be fatal. He was probably trying to delay Harry so his friends could attack.

“Stop!” Malfoy scrambled up and ran after him. But the moment he did, Harry had lengthened his stride, and a turn for speed when he was a child had been accented by Auror training. He got to the door first and leveled his wand at it, thinking a non-verbal Blasting Curse that ought to make the thing shudder on its hinges. If he did any damage to Malfoy’s precious home—because surely this had to be Malfoy Manor, it was decorated pretentiously enough—then that was an added bonus.

The door absorbed his spell and simply glowed red, rather than breaking apart. Harry backed up a step, watching narrowly. Then the glow intensified, and he whirled around and dived to the floor, pulling Malfoy with him on instinct. He had seen glows like that a few seconds before a curse came at him.

This time, nothing of the sort happened. The glow died, and Harry became aware that Malfoy was struggling to sit up. He let it happen and turned to face the bastard, yanking hard at the ring on his hand again. It stayed.

“What the fuck?” he explained.

Malfoy knelt there, head bowed, his chest heaving, and said nothing for long moments. It gave Harry an opportunity to study him. There ought to be some guilt in his face, if he was as concerned in this as Harry thought he was.

But there wasn’t. He just looked tired. Harry had seen the look in the mirror often since the war. No one had told him that being an adult was going to be this _hard._

Malfoy had unexpectedly ragged hair, the ends cut as though someone had gone crazy on them with a pair of scissors and left them hanging that way. Maybe he just didn’t have time to groom this morning, Harry thought, seeing as he was busy enslaving people with magical rings. The robes he wore were formal and pale, which meant he hadn’t anticipated ending up on the floor next to Harry. Perhaps something had gone wrong with his plan. Harry had seen the ring _he_ wore, too, of course, and it looked to be the twin of his. Just as stubborn and immovable, too.

“All right,” he said, when moments had passed and Malfoy had offered no explanation to match his own bewilderment. “Talk.”

Malfoy sat back on his heels and looked at him, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Harry was glad to see that those eyes were the same as ever, despite the weariness in the back of them. Cool, grey, disdainful. Good. It would be a lot easier to hate the bastard than if he just looked like any ordinary wizard of his generation that Harry might pass in the Ministry.

“My father did this,” Malfoy said. “Not me. I—annoyed him, and he took his revenge on me.” He held up his ringed hand. “I assume he thought the most annoying revenge possible would be to bind me to you in marriage.”

Harry felt a lump of snow collect in his gut. “No,” he whispered. “That’s not—possible. He couldn’t have.”

“Couldn’t have,” Malfoy said, and his gaze was brilliant and bitter and clear now. Harry wondered fleetingly if the rings were letting them read each other’s minds, or if he was just better at reading people in general than he used to be. That was one thing the Auror training was supposed to do for you, but on the other hand, his instructors had usually despaired of him learning it.

_Along with a lot of other things,_ Harry reminded him, _and you proved them wrong on those, too._

“He did,” Malfoy said. “As the head of the Malfoy line, he can give me in marriage to whoever he wishes. And when he uses these rings, then the bargain—and the bond—is unbreakable.” 

Harry shook his head. “But he shouldn’t be the head of your family. That’s you, now.”

“Good to see you’ve noticed.”

Harry just shrugged, uncertain why Malfoy was staring at him that way. “Anyway, he shouldn’t be able to.”

Malfoy sighed and tugged at the ring absently, proving that he didn’t know how to get it off, either. “The Ministry took his vaults and the chance to act publicly from him, that’s true. But the right of forcibly giving a child in marriage is an archaic one, and not often used even by pure-bloods anymore. They forgot to remove it.”

Harry closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

“Don’t tell me.” Malfoy’s voice was soft and bright, but underneath it Harry could hear a tone of inexpressible bitterness. “You’re sobbing to yourself in your head, wondering why these things always happen to you, thinking about why you’re an innocent victim and you’re just too _good_ to suffer like this.”

Harry opened one eye and regarded him. “Actually, Malfoy, no. I’m thinking about all the ways those idiots at the Ministry have fucked up my life in the past, and how this is only another of them. Someone ought to come along and _take_ the right to make decisions away from them, I swear.”

Malfoy stared at him, so startled that he didn’t seem to realize how close he was leaning. Harry suppressed the urge to swat him away. For all he knew, the rings might not permit violence between them right now. “How else have they—fucked your life up?” Malfoy asked, pausing before he said the word as if it was too dirty for his silken mouth to pronounce, though Harry had heard him use it often enough at school.

Harry shook his head. “That isn’t the point right now.” He tugged one more time at the ring and gave a disgusted sigh. “Anyway. What does this marriage entail?”

“It’s _marriage_ ,” Malfoy said, and his voice had become immeasurably superior again. “Not even you can have lived this long in the marriage world without knowing what a couple does when they’re wed, Potter.” His gaze raked up and down Harry as if looking for some hidden deformity that would explain his ignorance.

Harry gritted his teeth. “What I _mean_ ,” he said, “is that I’ve seen a few marriage curses used in the field, and they usually involved forcing the victims to fuck.” He used the word on purpose and saw Malfoy hesitate and blink. “But we’re not doing that, which suggests this spell is different. What do we have to do?”

Malfoy took a step back and turned around to pace. Well, let him. Harry awaited an answer, studying the doors out of the room and trying to recall everything he’d heard or read about Malfoy and his father in the past few years. It could be important.

*

Potter was _rational._ Draco really hadn’t expected that.

Of course, he was an Auror, and Draco expected that he’d had to learn a small degree of rationality or he would have flown apart by now, or been killed by someone slightly more sane than the Dark Lord. It was—unpleasant to be surprised like that, to have to think of the reasons for Potter’s actions after they happened rather than simply anticipating them and using that foresight to trick him or get ahead of him. Draco told himself not to let it happen again, and finally rose to his feet from their undignified position of sitting on the floor.

He remembered how they’d got there in the first place, and frowned at Potter. “You thought the door was going to attack us?”

“From the color of the light, yes.” Potter kept sitting where he was, regarding Draco without intimidation, as though the height factor Draco was using meant nothing. Perhaps it didn’t, to him. His green eyes were absurdly calm and straightforward, as a matter of fact, and Draco tried not to let that make him flounder. “And you’d told me to wait. So I thought casting a spell on the door might cause a harsh reaction.”

“And you still tried to save my life?” Draco had to be clear on that point. It would have made sense if Potter had knocked him down to bring him within reach of his wand, but as far as he could tell, Potter hadn’t cast any aggressive spells on _him_ since he’d come into the room.

Potter’s eyes darkened. “We’re trained to do that, Malfoy,” he said, voice also lowering. “Now. I can only think of two reasons you would put off telling me what we have to do because of this curse: because you don’t know or because it’s too horrible to contemplate. Decide which one it is and tell me already.”

Draco looked away with a frown. He hadn’t anticipated that Potter would act like this about the curse, either.

“We—have to live in the same house,” he said. “We have to pool our vaults. The one who married into the family was expected to do that, to resign control of themselves to the Malfoys and their—the family as a whole, really, more than the single spouse.”

“Hmm,” Potter said. “And sex?”

Draco glared at him, but he had to admit that, if he hadn’t had more notions about what the Malfoy marriage usually meant, he might have been panicking, as well. Though he reckoned, to be absolutely fair, he couldn’t call Potter’s reaction panic. There was a heightened flush in his cheeks and a bright glitter in his eyes, but he wasn’t shouting and flinging destructive curses around the way Draco had assumed he would be.

Draco shook his head. “The Malfoys married for convenience, and the last time this was used, sex was still considered to be something that would happen any time two attractive young people were placed near each other. Not something one needed to have sentimental associations to do.” He couldn’t resist giving Potter an expressive look on the last words.

Potter returned it with a sneer and twisted lithely to his feet. The formal grey robes he was wearing—and for the first time, Draco wondered why he was wearing them—swept out from his neck and then back as they settled.

That was enough time for Draco to make out a livid weal of scars across the back of Potter’s shoulders and throat that he was _sure_ the bastard hadn’t had in school. They were an odd color, grey like the robes, ash-colored. Draco leaned forwards, trying to see more.

Potter caught the movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head to look at him. Draco promptly backed away, hands raised, his heartbeat accelerating until he thought it would be next to impossible for Potter not to hear it. Potter hadn’t moved fast, but that barely mattered, given the look in his eyes just then.

“All right,” Potter said, and tugged the collar and shoulders of the robe up until they obscured the scars. Draco sat on his curiosity. “Can you persuade your father to take the spell off?”

“Not unless I also give him the control of the vaults and the public behavior of the Malfoy family that he seems to want,” Draco said, lifting his chin and preparing to stare down any smart remarks that Potter might be about to offer, about how that wouldn’t be such a sacrifice. “And I will never do that.”

“You’d only be the one arrested by the Ministry, if you did,” Potter said, unbalancing Draco with the wave of opposition that wasn’t there. “What about breaking the rings to get them off?”

“They would take our hands with them,” Draco said, with a cold glance that he hoped said, while Potter might not be above heroically sacrificing his limbs in the cause of freedom, Draco was more sensible.

Potter tapped his fingers against the corner of his lip, a gesture Draco had never seen before, but thought meant he was thinking. _Well, no wonder it’s rare._ “What happens if we _don’t_ live together and pool our vaults? Tell me that.”

“Then the curse—excuse me, the _parental privilege_ —starts inflicting pain on us until we do. The pain—not even you could bear it, Potter.” Draco closed his eyes, shivering. He had read descriptions of that pain back when his father still thought Draco was a worthy son and ought to know every important fact of his heritage. “Don’t ask me to try it.”

“I won’t,” Potter said stolidly. “Fine. Is there any countercurse that we might be able to find?”

Draco sighed. “Perhaps, but I think the chance is slim. I called it a curse, but it really isn’t. It’s a simple effort of will for the head of the Malfoy line, like deciding what clothes to put on in the morning. Spells aren’t designed to counteract things like that.”

Potter nodded slowly. “Yeah, I see. Well, then, let’s go talk to Lucius.” He swirled towards the door he hadn’t tried to attack, pausing to glance back at Draco for guidance.

“I told you, he won’t take anything I can actually offer him.” Draco trotted after him, smoothing one finger over the ring and hating the way that the braids pricked at him like thorns. There was nothing his father could have done that would be more inconvenient and humiliating than this, and he must have known that. It was the perfect solution to Draco’s disobedience, really, because he still didn’t want to kill his only living child.

“But he might take something from me,” Potter said softly, and opened the door.

The house-elves were lined up outside, waiting for them. 

Draco jerked to a halt in surprise. He had forgotten that the elves could sense it when one of the bloodline married, especially if it was a forced marriage. The nearest elf bounced up on its toes and touched an ecstatic, trembling hand to its forehead, eyes so wide that Draco knew tears would start falling any moment.

“Sini wishes to wish Master Draco Malfoy and Master Harry Malfoy congratulations on their marriage,” it squeaked.

Draco took note of the grammar, the best he’d ever heard a house-elf use, before he took note of the tension that had settled into Potter’s muscles. He controlled it much better than he ever had when they were back in school; his head simply tilted a bit forwards, and his shoulders rippled once. But Draco could feel the shift in power through their rings, a connection that he thought he had noticed before Potter because he was the only one who knew how to look for it. Potter was close to bringing his magic screaming down on everyone in sight.

“This is a side-effect you forgot to warn me about,” was all he said, in a controlled voice, turning to face Draco. “The women who married into the Malfoy family would automatically give up their last names, I suppose?”

Draco nodded uneasily. It had seemed something so small that he hadn’t thought to include it in the list of immediate consequences Potter had asked for. He might have made a mistake.

On the other hand, meeting those burning eyes, he knew now would be the wrong time to admit it. He would _not_ let Potter intimidate him or force him into doing something he knew was impossible. He lifted his chin. “Your name will have changed on your records in the Ministry, and anywhere else official records are kept. All the elves know as well, of course. And my mother probably knows, if she was paying attention to the Malfoy magic at all.”

“I see.” Potter glanced at him more fully. 

Draco stepped back from the look in his eyes. A Blasting Curse would have laid him out less successfully.

“We _will_ be discussing this later.” It sounded like it was an effort for Potter to keep his voice below a shout, but he managed. He turned to the nearest house-elf, seeming to have figured out that he could give it orders, now that he was a Malfoy. “Lead us to Lucius,” he commanded.

The elf led on, and Potter followed it, and Draco followed _him_ , eyes never leaving the middle of his back—except when Potter’s robes swished and showed glimpses of that grey scar as well as some others that stretched away towards his spine.

He refused to let Potter intimidate him. But it seemed Potter intended to return the favor.


	2. Across the Abyss

Malfoy Manor unfolded around Harry as the elf led them further and further into it, up stairs, down stairs, around corners, through corridors, through rooms. He stared at ivory and gold and marble and silver and obsidian and emeralds and stained glass, and his feet clicked on tiles and wood and smooth stone that he'd hate to be on during a running battle. And there was always more of it. He didn't think the journey to Lucius took ten minutes, but it was twice that long in terms of fortunes and riches.

Harry swallowed back his own saliva. It burned, sour, going down.

It was _too much._ For the first time, Harry thought he understood the Malfoys. To live in a house like this, you'd either have to let it crush you with thoughts of the grandeur that you could never live up to, or you'd have to expand your spirit until you filled it from top to bottom. Obviously, they had chosen the latter course.

Harry understood it now. That didn't mean he had to like it. He rubbed at the ring on his finger and wondered for a moment why copper was part of it. That looked like base metal that the Malfoys would never willingly allow into their house or their lives.

But there were more important things to think about, like the way Malfoy followed him without complaint and the anxious bows the elf gave him when it finally opened the door into a book-lined study.

Lucius Malfoy sat behind a table so polished that Harry winced back from it. He might see his reflection. Malfoy gave him a smile full of teeth he'd probably stolen from a shark and leaned forwards, giving a gracious wave of one arm. 

"Permit me to welcome my new son-in-law," he said. "I am honored to have someone in the family who has done so much for it."

Harry gauged Lucius's mood from his eyes, from his smile, from the eager way his fingers shook when he uncurled them, and decided on his own response in proportion to that. No, he couldn't exactly read people the way the Auror instructors thought he should be able to, but he had his own resources and weapons. "Tell me what I need to trade to be free of this."

Lucius sat upright, his smile fading. Harry heard Malfoy click in behind him, but he said nothing yet. Of course, he thought opposing his father was hopeless. Harry would have been surprised if he _had_ decided to intervene.

"You think a trade can annul a marriage?" Lucius shook his head. "The customs of marriage are ancient and forceful. You are our son-in-law until such time as I decide to release you."

"I know that," Harry said. He leaned one hip on the table that separated them. "So tell me what will make you release me."

Lucius laughed low in his throat and glanced past Harry at his son. "I chose better than I knew when I gave him to you, then. I _like_ this one, Draco. A core of steel is always appropriate for a Malfoy spouse."

Harry waited until Lucius looked at him again. He knew that Lucius wanted him to fly into a rage from being ignored. Harry was disinclined to give him the satisfaction. Besides, he'd had a chance to learn something about patience recently. 

_Many chances, really._

For a moment, his spine crawled. Harry let nothing of it show in his face. "Perhaps money traded to you," he said in a thoughtful voice. "The Wizengamot doesn't permit you to have control of the Malfoy fortune, of course. But I could provide some. Tell me how much you need."

Lucius stared again. "You would do that? Empower an enemy that you know now can hurt you?"

Harry shook his head and spun the ring on his finger. "I have no admiration, only resentment. So, yes." If Lucius was stupid enough not to realize how little Harry valued money next to his freedom, then that was fine. Harry could let him keep thinking that. 

Lucius leaned forwards across the desk and studied him some more. Harry bore up to the scrutiny easily. Lucius had nothing on Head Auror Jansen when he was in a foul mood, or even Hermione when Harry had been out drinking the night after some case gone wrong.

Finally seeming satisfied that Harry wouldn't crumple up and blow away to dust in front of his eyes, the way his son probably did, Lucius grunted and shook his head. "No, money is not enough."

"Then what is?" Harry laid one palm on the desk, letting smudges of sweat creep over the wood.

Lucius looked from Harry's hand to his face. Harry let his lips twitch, and didn't move.

"I have chosen better for you than you would for yourself, Draco," Lucius said at last. His voice was thick with some emotion Harry couldn't identify. "I'll let him remain in harness with you for a while and see what happens. He might bring back the prestige and honor to our family that we so badly lack."

Harry blinked, once, and Lucius lurched back with a cry as a silent explosion of white light went off right in front of his eyes. Harry started to move around the desk. He had used that trick, one bit of wandless magic he had thoroughly mastered, on a hundred enemies. While they flailed at the afterimages, he would get close enough and take them by the throat.

Malfoy seized his arm, bearing down on it. Harry hissed and twisted to throw him off. Malfoy let himself fall so that his ringed hand brushed against Harry's.

A shock of tingling paralysis through the rings made Harry hiss again and stand still long enough for Malfoy to wrestle him around. Malfoy's eyes were wide, and he looked at Harry as if he were a dog who had gone unexpectedly rabid.

"What are you _doing_?" he whispered. "Offering violence to your father-in-law?"

"This is a _sham_ marriage, Malfoy," Harry said, keeping his voice low, because obviously Malfoy had lost some of his higher brain functions sometime in the last few minutes. "That means I don't owe him anything but a firm grip that will force him to change his mind. Unless you want to remain in this trap for reasons of your own, of course," he added, aiming his words to sting, and rubbing his fingers furiously against Malfoy's. "This the most action you've had lately?"

*

It took more effort than Draco liked for him to remain still and meet Potter's eyes. He wanted to turn his back. He wanted to spit. He wanted to crush the bastard's fingers and break his skin against the unyielding ring.

He understood _nothing._ If Potter had become stronger and more violent, he had done it at the expense of more subtle reasoning skills.

If Potter could have convinced Lucius to accept something from him in return for removing the marriage bond, then Draco saw no reason to intervene. He would have tried negotiations himself if he hadn't known that there was only one price his father would accept and that he could not bear to pay it. But violence was another step up the ladder, a step into unacceptability. 

Not to mention that the marriage bond would _hurt_ Potter if he hurt Lucius, and his spouse along with him, and Draco had no desire to experience that pain.

"This may be a sham in your eyes," he said, when Potter was leaned forwards and focused on him to an extent that Draco knew meant he had forgotten Lucius, still trying to get his sight back across the desk. "But it is a real marriage to anyone pure-blooded. We need not treat it like one in the privacy of our house. But you _will_ not threaten my parents. You _will_ not destroy our property. You _will_ accept me and name me your spouse in polite conversation."

Potter's lips smiled. His teeth didn't. "Why should I care what you want?" he asked. "I'm not pure-blooded, and if I did pretend the way you wanted, no one who matters would believe it in any case. We won't spend one unnecessary moment together. Pretend to your friends all you like. I won't be doing the same." And his magic spiked and swirled down his arm towards Draco, like a coil of barbed wire.

Draco ignored that. They couldn't threaten each other with magic when the rings were touching like this. "I thought you rational," he said. "Grown up from the stupid child who would have wrestled with the inevitable _exactly_ like this. Shall I be glad that I was wrong?"

Potter hesitated, his nostrils narrow. Then he called his magic back into himself with a swift snap that made Draco's mouth water. If _he_ had that sort of control over his magic, he wouldn't have cared about the ring around his finger. He would have been secure in himself against any bond that his father tried to place on him. He wondered what else had happened to Potter, that he couldn't be content with that.

"You don't think he'll negotiate with me?" Potter turned his head and watched Lucius with a feral expression. Draco looked with him. His father had recovered and sat with his hands quietly folded in his lap, face expressionless. Draco knew that wall-like aspect of his features from childhood. He sighed.

"No," he said. "And the magic of the bond won't permit violence in the family. Which means that we'll need to remain like this until he grows bored with the situation, or figures out that it won't get him what he wants."

"Why should I grow bored?" Lucius asked. "I told you, Draco, I rather like your chosen."

Draco turned his back to his father, shutting him out and forcing Potter to turn at the same time; this close, the rings wove a physical connection between them, though he didn't think Potter had figured that out yet. Potter watched Draco with a gaze like a forging fire. Draco nodded to him and didn't try to hold eye contact. It might make him seem weak to Potter that he couldn't, but he didn't think so. Potter had just seen how strong he was, how much certain things mattered to him.

"I want to preserve proprieties," Draco said. "I want to give my father--and my mother, who will also be affected by this--the respect due to them. Private family conflicts should _never_ be exposed. We should be all praise and support for each other in public." He risked meeting Potter's eyes again, and encountered no understanding there, but a banked flame.

"That sounds as if you don't intend to work on a way to break the marriage bond," Potter said, and his magic gathered itself again, wrapping him like a storm of thorns. Draco shook his head and wondered if the control he had seen a moment ago was so real after all.

"Not in public," Draco said. "I will _not_ show them what my father has become. And you won't, either."

Potter looked at him mildly enough now, but that was because, as Draco discovered a moment later, all the fire had gone into his voice. "That's going to be difficult," he said. "I'm dating Ginny. I'm on the verge of asking her to marry me. I won't put that off, and you're not going to interfere."

Draco grimaced despite himself. This Potter, with his power and his scars and his mixture of danger and restraint, deserved someone far stronger than the littlest Weasley, if not quite the honor of a marriage into the Malfoy line.

"Then the solution is obvious," he said. "We pass it off as a marriage of convenience. There are no rules about _discreetly_ having lovers. Everyone will believe it on my side easily enough. They know that we need money if we're going to expand our businesses and our contacts in the new Ministry."

"And on my side?" Potter shifted his shoulders as though against the imposition of a yoke. "What will they think it comes from on my side?"

Draco looked at him, and the answer sprang to his lips without premeditation. "Privacy. Behind our wards, you can lead a life that the newspapers can't touch. And we have artifacts that can give you the same experience in public."

Potter reared back, then came to a stop as he noticed that the connection between their rings kept him from retreating. "Right," he said, a bit wild around the eyes. "My friends would believe that, perhaps, but the papers wouldn't."

"Does it matter so much what _they_ say?" Draco shook his head. "There are some people who will make up stories about us no matter what we do. It's better to have one that your friends will believe, isn't it? That will make this seem all the more real."

"Telling them the truth doesn't sound bad at all," Potter said, and looked him dead in the eye. "They know that I love Ginny. They know that I haven't been associating with you. And I can trust Ron and Hermione to keep the secret, if we _have_ to keep it a secret." His mouth twisted. "If we have to," he repeated softly, as though he was trying to come to terms with it himself.

"The problem is that _I_ don't trust your friends," Draco pointed out. He wondered if he should emphasize to Potter that they had to act as a partnership now and in the near future. He would have thought that Potter had adapted to working with people by now, since he'd had Weasley as an Auror partner for years, but perhaps not. The glory showered on him alone might have accustomed him to his mental and emotional solitude. "No. We can't tell them. And you'd have an excellent reason for keeping any association with me from them. You _know_ they would disapprove."

Potter's mouth curled again. "That's one word for it," he agreed.

"So." Draco caught his eyes again. "I meant what I said. The marriage curse will only pain us if we stay in separate homes or refuse to pool our vaults."

"What about someone calling me Potter?" Potter folded his arms, ignoring the way that that pulled on their joined rings.

Draco grimaced a bit. It was unpleasant to realize that the spell would deny him his favorite way of referring to his new--husband. "They can call you that," he said. "But you can't sign documents that way, and the official records at the Ministry--"

"No longer refer to me that way. Yes, you told me." Potter's gaze went over Draco's head to the far wall, and he stood so still for a long moment that Draco wondered if this was what it was like to be married to a statue.

"Yes," Potter said finally. "All right. Ginny won't like it, but then, I suspect whatever witch you're courting won't, either."

"How do you know I'm courting someone?" Draco asked reflexively. He and Astoria Greengrass had met for preliminary negotiations, but he had made bloody sure _that_ was kept out of the papers. He had her family's permission and his parents', and that was enough.

Potter gave him an amused, superior glance. "Not hard to work out," he murmured. "You want your family line to continue--why did your father curse you to be with a _male_ , by the way?--and the only way to do that is have children. I've had plenty of opportunity in the past few minutes to see how highly you value your family. You would never do something that could endanger its future, such as not marrying."

Draco narrowed his eyes. He disliked being understood this way. He sought for something that would allow him to strike back, and remembered Potter's freak-out over his name, the way his eyes had shone--and not with happiness, either.

"You value your family, too," he said. "Or why were you so upset when the marriage named you Malfoy? I'd thought you'd have less pure-blood tradition to keep up, what with your mother's blood."

He had barely finished saying that when he found himself unable to breathe. 

*

Harry watched with some detachment as his magic slid down and wrapped Malfoy's throat with glittering thorns that only he could see. They shone as if tipped with ice, and Harry reached out and put his hand on one, bearing down. Malfoy's eyes went wide, his breath bursting out of him as though in a hurry to escape the tainted confines of his lungs, and his hands rose uselessly.

"You said that we couldn't hurt each other with magic," Harry leaned in to whisper. "But this isn't hurting you. This is holding you on the _edge_ of pain and showing what I can do. Don't say anything about my mother again, and I won't have to do this again." He clapped his fingertips together, and the magic vanished from Malfoy, withdrawing into his own body. Harry had read time and again during Auror training that wandless magic was impossible, but once again, he seemed to be the exception. It was true that he couldn't just _will_ things to happen, though; he had to use some gesture from his eyes or hands to control it.

Malfoy stared at him still. Harry hitched his shoulder into a shrug and said, "I've dreamed of having a wife and children since I left Hogwarts. Ginny is going to be that wife. I _am_ going to have these children. Now. You didn't answer me. Why did your father curse you to marry a man when he must have known that I wouldn't be able to provide you with the heirs he wants to have so he can twist their minds?"

Malfoy massaged his throat and shook his head. "He's still in the same room, you know, Potter." Harry had to smile. At the moment, even Malfoy's contemptuous tone to his name, his _real_ name, thrilled him. Malfoy hadn't managed to forget who Harry really was yet, and if he didn't, then that might prevent it ever happening. "You could ask him."

"I don't trust his answers," Harry said, ignoring Lucius's chuckle. "I trust you more. _Think_ before you respond, moron," he added, when Malfoy began to open his mouth with a speed that said nothing good about what was coming next.

Malfoy touched his throat again as if there were going to be bruises, and said, "This is not a marriage for the future to him, Potter. He cursed me purely out of irritation, and chose you as the candidate who would humiliate and anger me the most. When I give him what he wants, then he'll end it."

Harry cocked his head. Yes, that made sense as far as it went, but... "Why are you taking this so seriously, then, if he isn't?" Malfoy blinked at him, clearly showing that the words had sped past him like chances for altruism past a Death Eater, and Harry rolled his eyes and rephrased. "He abused a Malfoy family tradition that's meant to produce, oh, heirs and a suitable spouse for the heir, or however you would phrase it in your own inimitably pompous style." Malfoy rocked backwards as if slapped, and Harry had to laugh. "What, didn't know that I knew a word like inimitably?"

"You couldn't spell it, at least," Malfoy retorted, but he sounded a bit breathless for more than one word. Harry smiled. The more he could throw Malfoy off-balance, the better he could arrange things for himself, so that, as long as this sham marriage lasted, he didn't have to put up with something intolerable. Negotiations with the Ministry and criminals had taught him that you wanted to seize an advantage as soon as you could.

He resisted the urge to rub the back of his neck and said, "Well? He used this tradition as a means of revenge. Why are you taking it seriously, to the point of insisting that _I_ should?"

Malfoy licked his lips. "Because," he said, with a reluctance that reminded Harry of Hermione trying to crack an egg, "I can rage at him in private. _You_ can rage at him in private, now that you're part of the family, as long as you don't offer him physical or magical violence." Harry glared at him, but he didn't take the warning. In fact, he moved closer and lifted their ringed hands between them. "But the public doesn't need to know. That's the distinction. Public and private. One _you_ ought to be able to understand."

Harry sighed and nodded. He had learned early on in Auror training that the public would never leave him alone, and the best thing he could do was ignore the rumors and raise a defensive wall of truth or more rumors, whatever worked best. His private life remained that, despite the spirited attempts of _Prophet_ reporters to erase the distinction.

"Doesn't explain why you take it seriously to the point of wanting me to lie to my friends, who _would_ keep the secret, and follow all the forms," he said.

Malfoy moved closer still, and even though he kept flicking his eyes to Harry's fingers, as though he expected the thorns to sprout from them, his face held a quiet seriousness that made Harry blink and pay closer attention. Perhaps there was more to the bastard than he'd thought. He was certain of it when Malfoy reached out and put a hand on Harry's chest, above his heart, with barely a flinch at either the proximity or the coarse fabric of Harry's robes.

Harry controlled his immediate defensive reaction--Auror training was good for a lot of things, but not for tolerating casual touches in vulnerable places--and waited, eyes once again meeting Malfoy's.

"Because this is my choice," Malfoy said. "This is the way I've wanted to live my life since the war, being as much of a Malfoy as I can, when my father nearly undid all the chains that bind us."

"I could do worse than this, Draco," Lucius called from behind his desk.

Malfoy ignored him magnificently, perhaps, Harry thought, because he knew that was a lie. "My father cast this spell primarily to humiliate me. I'm going to show him that he can't succeed. I _will_ live the way I want to, as the public face of the Malfoy family, as a pure-blood, as myself. If that means having a husband for a time who is not one I would have chosen..." He twitched, a motion that conveyed a shrug without doing anything so ill-bred as to actually give one. "Many Malfoys have not married at their own pleasure. I will be doing nothing more or less than continuing another tradition that matters to me." He leaned a bit closer, breath that smelled of citrus brushing Harry's chin. "Besides," he murmured, "living this way will irritate my father more than anything else, and may be the best chance we have to convince him to change his mind."

Harry stared hard at him. Malfoy never wavered away, never blinked more than was needed to moisten his eyes. His hand remained in place, and his fingers didn't pull away, either.

"All right," Harry said at last.

Malfoy's mouth tumbled open. Whatever victory he had expected to earn from Harry, concession didn't seem to be it. "What?"

Harry smiled a little. "I can respect that," he said. "The determination to be what you want to be, in the face of the world's wishes and hopes otherwise." _The determination to be yourself. The Dursleys didn't break me, and neither did Voldemort, and neither did the media frenzy after the war. This is only another thing to resist._ "Besides, you said that the bond would inflict lots of pain on us if we didn't at least move in together."

"And pool our vaults," Malfoy added, now sounding dazed.

"And pool our vaults," Harry agreed, with a wince that he hoped he kept in check. He had been living off the money that he earned as an Auror; he thought the Potter fortune should remain untouched for his children. He could only hope that Malfoy wouldn't take too much of it before this sham ended. "I don't want to endure that, and I do want this to end someday. Fine. We live as best as we can, and I'll pretend to everyone that this is--convenience. And date Ginny," he added, prepared to stare Malfoy down if he had to.

Malfoy shrugged. "I intend to continue my marriage negotiations, despite this setback."

Harry nodded, and sneaked a glance at Lucius as Malfoy finally twisted his hand and their rings separated. Lucius was smiling, but the smile looked like a soap scrawl on a mirror, and his hand was tight on his cane.

"Trying to force people to do what you want almost never works out," Harry told him. "Especially when one of those people is me."

He left the room before Lucius could respond, and his new husband walked beside him. Harry reckoned that was tolerable.

For a little while.


	3. The Width of a Decision

"Draco."

His mother's voice was so soft, so gentle, that Draco might have imagined he hadn't heard it, if he didn't know better. After all, he had felt the shift and tightening in the wards when she had come through the front door. The Manor's wards, if they could be said to have emotions, were most contented when all of the family was safely contained within them once more. 

Of course, now some of them remained on alert, tingling in the back of Draco's consciousness like teeth stung with cold. They were on the alert because Potter was outside them, instead of where he belonged.

Draco smoothly calculated the time as he rose to his feet and bowed to his mother. He estimated that they had perhaps another hour before the marriage bond began to punish them for not living in the same house. Surely Potter should be back with his personal effects before then. How large could his home be in any case, compared to the Manor?

"What changed?"

Draco took a moment to drink in the sight of his mother, advancing to meet him with quick, smooth steps, her hand lifted as if she was resting it on the mane of a horse that walked beside her. _This_ was the spouse for a Malfoy, glassy and beautiful and tranquil. Not to mention female. Draco had begun the marriage negotiations with the Greengrass family because he had seen something of his mother in their younger daughter. He only hoped that he would be as lucky as his father.

"What right did the Wizengamot forget to take away from Father when they made me head of the family?" he asked her, taking one of her hands between both of his and lifting it to his mouth as she came to a halt beside his bed.

"Oh," his mother said on an exhaled breath, turning her head as if she could see Lucius through the marble walls that separated them. "He would not?"

"He would," Draco said, with a sigh. "Because I would not give back the rights that the Wizengamot gave to me."

He watched his mother's face closely as he said that, but she only nodded, and a weight he hadn't known he bore fell away from him. "I did not think he would use it," Narcissa said, sliding her fingers up and down Draco's palm. "On the other hand, if he bound you in marriage to the Greengrass girl, it would be as well to pretend yielding and console her in private."

Draco shook his head. "That would have been giving me too much of what I wanted. He chose the most humiliating option possible, the one that he thought would have me groveling within two minutes."

His mother turned to him then, her eyebrows lifting in the perfect arch that Draco loved and had often tried to imitate. 

Draco wanted a beat more of silence, then, surprised she wouldn't try to guess, replied, "Harry Potter."

For one moment, his mother pressed down on his hand as if she needed his support, and then she sighed and stepped away. "Of course he would think that the most humiliating option," she said. "It is not--there are far worse he could have chosen--but it is typical of the way your father thinks. Sometimes I think that the man I married is dead, and at other times, I know that he is simply hidden behind the mask of idiocy that he thinks serves his purposes best."

Draco stared at her, then said, "Potter, he _is_ the worst choice. He has no respect for pure-blood traditions. He barely agreed to leave the facade of a convenient marriage intact, although this will affect his reputation as much as it will mine--more. He tried to attack Father, and me."

"He is not the worst for the same reason that I did not guess your father's choice immediately," his mother said, turning towards the door. "The Manor is still standing."

Draco rolled his eyes, since her back was turned and she wouldn't--

"Do _not_ use such juvenile gestures, Draco. It is your years that number twenty-six, not your months."

Draco's face burned, and he cleared his throat. He didn't know how she did that, but then again, he had given up trying to understand the spell she undoubtedly employed long ago. "Your pardon, Mother. But Potter doesn't have the power to destroy the Manor. And he could at least _try_ to cooperate with me, instead of acting as though the proprieties don't matter to him."

Narcissa paused near the doorway and turned back to him. Her smile was very faint, but Draco recognized it. He squirmed and let go of the handful of bedcovers that he had unaccountably picked up.

"I felt his power when my hand rested above his heart in the Forbidden Forest," his mother said gently. "Yes, he could have brought the house ringing down about our ears if he wanted. And you cannot have it both ways, son. Either he is some barely-civilized Muggle who has no reason to respect our traditions, or he is someone who can and should, which means acknowledging his worth."

She left. Draco listened to the direction of her footsteps and discovered she was traveling towards the study. He winced and turned to the fireplace in his room, not one that he often traveled through because he didn't like getting soot on his rugs.

But he owed Astoria an explanation, and he would rather not be around when his mother smiled at his father.

*

"What was it this time?"

Harry kept his head bowed as he stamped the ashes off his boots and tried to decide whether he loved or hated the resignation in Ginny's tone. The only conclusion he could come to was that he didn't blame her for it. After all, their last six dates had been either shortened or delayed by magical London acquiring a bad case of magical creatures or Dark wizards.

"It was something different this time, actually," he said, bending down to kiss her cheek as he took his seat at the table nearest the fireplace. Ginny had waited in the Leaky Cauldron for him, their usual meeting place. Arriving too early at the restaurants or parties they wanted to attend was just asking for trouble from the press, and though they sometimes left from one or the other of their flats, there had been too many times that Harry nearly led some criminal through their wards. "Something to do with this." He held up his left hand so that Ginny could see the damn Malfoy ring.

She gasped and gripped the edge of the table. "Harry," she whispered.

Harry relaxed a fraction. She wasn't storming off without giving him a chance to explain--which he was definitely going to do, damn Malfoy anyway. He didn't need to know. Their worst rows had started with one of them leaving. "Lucius Malfoy was angry that his son wasn't doing what he told him to like an obedient little puppet," he said dryly. "So he bound him in marriage to the person who would most annoy Draco. Me."

Ginny stared at him and shook her head, but Harry didn't think it was in denial. "What happens now?" she said a moment later, which proved it.

"We have to live together and pool our vaults, and I can't hurt any of them," Harry said. "My name has already changed on the official Ministry records." He swallowed to get some of the bile to go away. That change irritated him the most when he thought about the future. _I want children, and I want them to have my last name._ "But since neither of us wants this, and there's no sexual component to the bond, we can still date whoever we want." He held her eyes. "All I can ask is that you put up with it if you can. And with--well, lies used for cover. You have to act in public as if you believe that this is really a marriage of convenience. Malfoy--Draco, that is--wants to go with discretion for now so that there's a chance his father will free us sooner, and so the press won't make fun of him, I reckon."

Ginny licked her lips and sat up straight. "Then I have to ask," she said. "Do you love me?"

Harry leaned back with a small smile and watched her. She had worn a black gown for their date tonight, and it left her shoulders and the skin around her collarbone bare. Her ears shone with frozen teardrops, strung on slender silver chains, that Harry had created from his own tears as soon as he learned the spell. An ivory band held back her sleek red hair. She looked like a vision in darkness and flame. "Of course," he said steadily. "I was coming here tonight to talk about marriage, but not the one that I just mentioned to you." He held his hand across the table.

Ginny's face went through several color changes, and then she ducked her head and shook it back and forth. The earrings rang softly. "Oh, Harry," she whispered. "I love you, too." She was smiling when she turned back to him. "I'll wait. I don't think this marriage can last long enough for me to forget about you. And the day, the _minute,_ you're free, I'll happily say yes."

Harry took her hands. "Are you all right with the lies?"

Ginny made a face. "Not all right, but I accept that they have to be there. I want you free, and Malfoy really think this is the fastest way to make it happen?" She looked at him inquiringly.

Harry nodded. "He seemed to think that going on as if nothing had irritated him was the best bet. I agree. I did try to make an offer to Lucius, but he wants something from Draco, not from me."

Ginny sighed hard enough to make the candleflames on the table waver. "All right." She paused. "Would you like me to tell Ron and Hermione?"

Harry closed his eyes in relief. "If you don't mind. I have the feeling that I should move my possessions in Malfoy Manor as soon as possible, before the bond hurts me, and _somebody_ has to impress the need for discretion on Ron, because I pretended to promise Malfoy that I wouldn't tell you. I don't think I can do that." He waved his left hand again. "Ron'll blow up every time he looks at this fucking thing."

"Language," Ginny said, a habit she'd picked up from Hermione in the last few months, and cocked her head to smile at him. "I'll do that. There's something else I might be able to do, too."

"What's that?" Harry tried not to sound eager. If he did, then he would wonder what in the world he could do to fight free of this marriage, and then he would become obsessed with it, and he had learned in the past year that that wasn't a good idea. For something he had to endure, at least, rather than something he could blast his way through.

"The forced marriage isn't commonly used by pure-bloods anymore." Ginny entwined her fingers with his, though she kept away from the ring. 

Harry nodded. "Malfoy said that."

"There's a reason," Ginny said. "Even when it happened, it depended on who they took in marriage, the relative statuses of the families, and so on." She made a face in time to meet Harry's grimace, and they grinned at each other. "I didn't listen when Mum was going on about it," Ginny said, blowing a strand of hair from her eyes. "So I don't know all the legal technicalities. But it's worth looking into. If the Malfoys have a higher status than the Potters according to these pure-blood laws, then Lucius can seize you and there's nothing anyone can do about it. But if you're equal, then he doesn't have the right. You can at least challenge the bond and make life uncomfortable for him."

Harry gripped her hands hard. "You're a wonder."

"I listen," Ginny said. "I look. I observe. That's all there is to it."

"So says you," Harry muttered, and leaned nearer to snatch a kiss. Ginny squeezed his wrist hard enough to stop him.

"Not that," she said, and her eyes burned suddenly. Harry leaned back, feeling the heat of the fire that he had missed in her so far. "Kissing my hands you can excuse, because that's the kind of gesture that a lot of wizards still expect men to show women. But a kiss on the lips...no, Harry, you're going to do that on the day that we can get married for real."

Harry took a short breath and nodded. Of course, he had kissed Ginny before, but this way of closing a door on him, he could respect. "All right."

Ginny smiled at him, murmured, "You say I'm a wonder, but you're the one who can keep going through all of the weird shit that is your life," and then slipped away. Harry followed her with his eyes until she vanished out the door of the Leaky Cauldron. He thought he saw her touch one of the earrings before she did.

Harry would have liked to sit at the table with his eyes closed, replaying the conversation in his brain, looking at the expression on her face when she said she loved him. But the weight of the ring on his finger dragged like a chain, and he forced himself to stand.

He didn't want to suffer overwhelming pain, either. And he was beyond-words-grateful that Ginny would tell Ron and Hermione the truth and talk them into pretending they didn't know. He could deal with the aftermath better than he could with the first explosive moments when he would have to see their pity, anger, horror, and outrage.

He'd had enough of that with...

Harry clenched his left hand into a fist, remembering the squeeze that Ginny had planted on his wrist. He _could_ put up with this, since she was putting up with so much worse. And one of the ways that he put up with things lately was not thinking about the large, dark slice taken out of the past year.

That didn't prevent his spine from hurting as he tossed the Floo powder into the fire and called out the name of his flat, but that was okay. It wasn't as though he needed to touch his spine in public.

Or ever, really.

*

"It does seem inconsiderate of your father."

Draco smiled. Astoria had taken it as he had known she would, like a lady, seated on the other side of the table in a glorious white dress that made her look as if she were surrounded by drifting fairy wings. Her hands curled gently around a cup of tea. Her peerless green eyes never moved from his face, but Draco could only see serenity behind them. 

"It should only be a short time," he said. "He would bind me in a forced marriage for spite, but he wouldn't sacrifice the future of our family for it. And _you_ are part of that future." He reached across the table and let his fingers brush her knuckles.

Astoria let his hand linger for exactly the right amount of time before she pulled hers back and turned away to sip the tea. Draco watched the long line of her neck, the touches of flesh-color only visible at the lobes of her ears and the bottom of her throat where it vanished into brilliant white. Of course the gown wasn't cut low enough to show a hint of breasts, but the shadows and the curves beneath it made Draco's body thrum an acceptable amount.

He would enter his marriage with pleasure and anticipation. It was more than he had been able to hope for a year ago.

"If you are sure," Astoria told the air in the large, empty, polished room where they had met. Draco looked around the curving walls of white marble and then towards the fireplace at the end, surrounded by ice-green stone. He felt still more coiled muscles in his legs relax. A woman reared in surroundings like this would do so well in the Manor that he wasn't sure if he had the words for it.

"That my father will break the marriage bond? Yes, he will in the end," Draco said. "Either that, or he will die soon, which will leave me with all the powers of the family head in my hands that the Wizengamot did not already grant me. And then there is no question what I will do."

Astoria turned back to him. Her blonde hair, bound back on her head in a severe net of silver mesh that glittered with pearls, resembled a polished helmet. It made the blood pulse in Draco's fingertips, too. "If you are sure," she repeated. "In the meantime, you will expect me to play the calm observer in public, of course."

"Of course," Draco said. He had told Potter that they would pretend it was a marriage of convenience to everyone outside the family, but he had _had_ to tell Astoria the truth. More, she was discreet, which none of Potter's friends counted as. He stood, because he had already stayed longer than the clipped half-hour a negotiation session should require. "Feel free to owl me at any time."

"What will that say for my discretion and your marriage?" Astoria smiled up at him, rising to her feet to give her farewell an extra courtesy. She was nearly as tall as Draco without the benefit of any artificial aids, her bearing as graceful as a swan's. She had more color than his mother, Draco thought critically, but no one could fault her in anything else. And it wasn't often that Malfoy spouses matched in color as his parents had, in any case. "Firecalls, I think. And an owl once a week, when the occasion warrants it."

Draco nodded, unable to find a flaw in the plan. They had been conducting the marriage negotiations that way, with infrequent owls that wouldn't alert anyone in the wizarding world before they wished to make the announcement. "Farewell, Astoria. The next time you see me, I hope to be shed of this." He held up the hand that bore his ring.

She leaned forwards and peered down at it from an inch or so away. Draco could feel the buzz that went through the ring when she did that. His ancestors hadn't cared about Malfoy hairs and their spouses giving their bodies to other people; it was assumed that even a forced marriage would never be between a Malfoy heir and someone who was not pure-blood and did not know the proper rules. But the ring was a symbol, and someone who did not fit into the marriage bond touching the ring another matter.

Sometimes, Draco thought he didn't understand his ancestors any better than a Mudblood like Potter did.

"Interesting," Astoria said quietly. "Why the braided rings of metal? I would have assumed that gold alone would suit the Malfoys."

Draco nodded, acknowledging the compliment to his bloodline's purity. "The gold does stand for purity," he said. "The silver stands for protection from Dark magic that the unwilling spouse might fling, or that someone outside the family might use in outrage." Astoria gave him a nondescript smile. "The copper has healing properties, and was supposed to guarantee a strong marriage."

"Forgive me for touching on so distasteful a subject," Astoria murmured, "but these are the rings used only in cases of a forced marriage, correct? One of them will never grace my hand."

Draco bowed to her, taking the chance to let his lips pass within a hairsbreadth of her fingers. "No, my lady. You will have a ring of pure gold when you become Lady Malfoy, crowned with a suitable gemstone." He let his eyes linger on the brilliance of her hair, the pure glory of her eyes. In truth, he hadn't yet decided whether a topaz or an emerald would suit her better. That was a decision that he could make later in the marriage negotiations.

"I look forward to the day that I come to you as a bride," Astoria said quietly, the most forward she had been, and wheeled around to walk out of the room. Draco watched her legs move, strong as the legs of a striding doe, before he sighed and turned to face the fireplace again.

It was time to leave. And probably to confront his forced husband again, considering that more than an hour had passed and Draco's body hadn't yet exploded in pain.

*

"Hello, Harry."

Harry hoped he didn't yelp when he heard the voice and spun around, but he was fairly sure that he did, if only because he had dropped one of his bookshelves on his foot coming through the fireplace.

Narcissa Malfoy stood in the entrance of the sitting room he'd entered by, her hands folded in front of her, smiling at him. _Smiling_ at him. That was what made her different from all the other times Harry had seen her before and made him have to blink hard, trying to make sure that he actually recognized her. She had on a sheer, forest-green gown, which made the room suddenly take on a lot of color; Harry thought he could see her reflection in the white walls as she moved forwards.

"Let me call elves to carry that for you," she murmured, studying his bookshelves--Harry hadn't wanted to take the time to remove their contents, so he'd just used Sticking Charms--and then the trunk he carried under one arm and the Auror robes slung over his shoulders. "If you had warned me, I would have sent them for these things already. Be so good as to give me your Floo address, and I will send them back for what remains, at least."

Harry shook his head sharply and tried not to think of what he'd felt when he watched the owl fly away with the key he'd sent to Ron and Hermione. "There's nothing else, madam. Just--this is it."

Narcissa turned her head and fixed him with a glance of cutting astonishment. Harry squirmed and turned away from her. He disliked this, he thought. He hated so much about it. He would never fit in with the Malfoys, and living with them would prove actively unpleasant, because he was _different._ He'd have to ask Malfoy how much time he needed to spend at the Manor, whether he needed to sleep there for the bond to count it or something. He had a feeling that for the next few months or however long it took to resolve this, he would spend his time at work and with his friends as much as possible.

"Don't be silly, Harry." Her voice was warm silk. "Please call me Narcissa."

Harry blinked and turned back to her. She was being--kind, letting him pretend that her stare came from what he'd called her rather than from what must seem like pathetically few belongings to her. "I--thank you, ma--I mean, Narcissa."

She gave a gentle laugh and clapped her hands. House-elves, including one Harry thought had guided them to Lucius before, appeared and began to take his things. "I assume my son did not tell you which rooms were to be yours before he left? That is like him. He attends to the smaller matters of courtesy and forgets the larger ones."

"Rooms?" Harry frowned and ignored the way his back hurt. "I don't need that much. All of these will fit in one room."

Narcissa studied him for a moment, smile fading. Then it returned, gentler and softer than before, starlight rather than sunlight.

"My son explained that you are part of the family now, yes?" she asked.

"By fraud and Lucius being a bastard, yes," Harry muttered.

She didn't scold him for the namecalling, as he had assumed she would. "It is not fraud to me," she said simply. "It is against my will, but my husband has suffered for it, be assured." Harry stared at her again, but her face was devoid of any tell he could see, and she simply continued. "While you are here, bound in marriage to Draco, you are family. You will be treated as such, and I shall shame my son and husband into it if I must. You are _ours_ now."

Harry swallowed, and thought for the first time in years of how he'd felt when Hagrid first gave the photo album to him and he saw his parents' faces, beaming down at him as they cradled him, an infant, in their arms.

"Then lead on," he said. "Please."

Narcissa gave him another sunlight smile as she turned, skirts swishing behind her, and led the way out of the room.


	4. The Distance Between Rings

"It's--too much."

That was the instinctive reaction that came out of Harry when Narcissa swung open the door of his rooms and showed what lay beyond to him. He was backing away before he realized what was happening, body turned as if he could shield his trunk and his Auror robes from the sight of the rooms.

Narcissa turned to face him, keeping her hands away from her body. Her eyes were mild and interested. _Well, maybe she knew I'd behave strangely after seeing me downstairs,_ Harry thought, ducking his chin to avoid her gaze. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Help me understand."

Harry stared at the rooms again instead of answering. The door was some white wood--birch? Harry had never been any good with identifying different kinds--and carved with a swirling spiral pattern that had silver and gold threaded through it. Harry had thought that was fancy enough.

But what lay beyond was far more impressive. And he already knew that he couldn't allow the Malfoys to give it to him.

The room he could make out was done in dark, rich colors, mostly reds, and Harry's first thought was that it would hide the blood. The fireplace glowed in one corner of the room, larger than the wall of his flat at home. The bed sprawled, enormous, across the center, a complicated arrangement of hooks and curtains draped around it, so that, Harry reckoned, you could admit exactly as much light as you wanted. Golden bell-pulls hung here and there. A full circle of chairs extended beyond the bed, with an alcove to the left of them that could swallow his pathetic bookshelves. The chairs were all overstuffed to the point that it looked like they had large fluffy cats lying on them. Harry could make out other tables and chairs scattered in other places, too.

He also saw a few open doors, one of which looked as though it led down a corridor, one that revealed the gleaming tiles of a bathroom.

Harry snapped back to himself to find Narcissa's gaze on him. He coughed and shook his head. "You're being very nice to me, madam," he said. "Nicer than the situation requires. But I can't accept this. I have no way to repay you."

Narcissa's smile grew edged. "Harry, you are being rude," she said softly. "I have asked you to call me Narcissa."

Harry stared, but she only continued, words flowing as smoothly as though that was the only rude thing he'd said. "You need not repay us. I explained the parameters of the situation. None of us, save my husband, wished for this to happen, but now that it has, we will and shall treat you as one of the family. Family deserves space and a home. You will have both." She sounded like Trelawney making a prophecy.

Harry shook his head. He wondered how he could explain. Ron and Hermione would have understood at once. Ginny--well, it hurt to think about Ginny, but he knew she would have understood, too. He couldn't sleep in the Malfoys' nice bed and eat their nice food and use their nice rooms without taking more than he should. It was like taking bribes for Auror work.

Yet another reminder about how different and difficult it was for him here, isolated in the middle of Malfoys.

"It's too much," he said at last, when Narcissa had gone on staring at him without being able to miraculously read his mind. "I need a bedroom and a bathroom, sure--or access to a bathroom. Not all the rest."

Narcissa smiled. "If you wish, you may certainly fetch your meals for yourself, rather than allowing the house-elves to bring them to you in bed. I fear that my son does too much of that, and it is spoiling him. And there is nothing that says you have to use the whole space. Sleep in the bed if you wish, arrange your books, light the fire, and ignore the rest."

Harry nodded slowly. "All right." It sounded like a livable compromise, at least, and he knew Narcissa was being more patient with him than either Draco or Lucius would have been. He stepped into the bedroom, clutching hard at the bundle of Auror robes. He would need a place to hang them, too, but the closet was at an awkward angle from the bed. Harry would prefer the series of hooks he could see at the foot. He wanted to see them as soon as he woke up, so he could always remember who he was and where he really belonged.

Narcissa clapped her hands, and a rush of house-elves came through the room, lighting the fire and beating dust off the bed and drawing back the curtains on the windows that Harry hadn't noticed before. They were at least as tall as six men of Harry's height, and they looked out on a small, glowing jewel of a garden, surrounded by the stone walls of the Manor. Harry cast a glance out them, then turned and looked around the room again.

"What is the matter?" Narcissa, hovering at his side, cast him an attentive glance.

"I--the colors," Harry said, hating to fuss, but also knowing that he wouldn't last one night in here, the way the darkness would close down when he had only the fire for light. The Malfoys would find out he had nightmares in complete darkness now, and that was intolerable. "Could they be lighter?"

Narcissa smiled, shiningly pleased about something. Harry didn't know what. Perhaps she just really, really liked interior decorating. "Which colors would you prefer, Harry?"

Harry hesitated, unsure. His walls at home were just white. "Green, I s'pose," he said at last. "As long as it's light. And maybe a bit of brown?" He looked at Narcissa from the corner of his eye, to see if that meant with her approval.

"The house-elves will have it ready by morning." Narcissa pressed Harry's shoulder. "I am glad that you are settling in," she murmured. "Juli will be your house-elf." One of the elves preparing the fire turned away from the hearth and bowed deeply to him. She had long white hairs on her ears, braided with small silver bells and tassels. "You may send her to me at any time if she cannot fetch you something you need or if you have a question."

"Thank you," Harry said, and waited until she was gone before he gave his first order to Juli. "Put lots of wood on the fire, please. Enough that it won't burn out during the night."

"Yes, Master Harry Malfoy." Juli bobbed up and down, ignoring Harry's frown, then snapped her fingers. A pile of _logs_ appeared beside her. Harry opened his mouth to say that that was too much, that she could take some of them away--

And thought again about what the Malfoys might find out if he woke in darkness. He shook his head. He couldn't take that risk.

Harry hung up his robes, arranged his books, and hesitated when he came to the trunk. It held his photo album of his parents, his Invisibility Cloak, and Hedwig's old cage. In the end, he shook his head and left it locked, as well as ordering Juli not to let any of the other elves touch it. He couldn't risk unpacking it in these confines, either.

He undressed and dragged on the pair of sleeping trousers he'd used since various things happened; he couldn't sleep wearing a shirt now, any more than he could sleep on his back. Then he dropped onto the bed, ignoring the sinfully soft and comfortable sheets that embraced his legs as much as he could, and closed his eyes. The firelight swarmed over his shoulders, banishing the shadows that might have lingered.

Perhaps it was early to go to sleep, but he wasn't hungry and he knew he would need his strength for the days ahead.

*

Draco woke when the wards tingled and snapped in his ears, much earlier than normal. His first hazy thought was that he had known his mother would go visiting today, but at seven in the morning?

Then he remembered Potter, and hissed through his teeth. Of course the bastard would go to work this early, like a model Gryffindor. Draco rolled over and stretched out a hand. Teri, one of the older and more reliable elves, was bowing beside his bed before he had completed the gesture.

"Find--Harry," Draco said, remembering just in time to use a name that Teri would recognize, "and remind him that he needs to be careful about what he says today."

Teri nodded, several times as a form of bowing and once to show that he understood the order, and then vanished. Draco turned back into his comfortable position and wrapped his arms beneath his head, attempting to return to sleep.

But wakefulness, and the reminder of his marriage, had him and wouldn't let him go. Draco pulled his hand from beneath his head so that he could study the ring. It shone softly in the light of the fire as well as the sun beginning to storm the windows, but Draco still thought it an ugly thing.

He would have to spend time with the older books today, seeking out the limits of the rings' powers and how many hours he and Potter needed to stay together. The sooner he knew exactly what they had to do, the sooner he could set up the confines within which he could be comfortable.

Potter would learn to be comfortable within them, too, or he would suffer. Draco only intended to let this affect him out in public, where his apparent tranquility in a marriage of convenience would only be one of many masks that he had to wear.

He sat up, shook himself off, and summoned his breakfast with a clap of his hands. He always ate the same thing in the mornings: toast, sliced oranges and pineapples in a single delicate cup, and bits of chicken wrapped in cream. It helped him think.

He wondered, with a snort, what Potter had had for breakfast. Probably half the eggs they had in the house, to look at him. Potter _must_ eat a lot of sulfur, for the purposes of exhaling it at Malfoys as brimstone later.

*

"Harry, mate, I'm so sorry."

Harry stretched a big smile across his lips as yet another camera flashed outside his office, and then the reporter ducked down the corridor before someone could ask him uncomfortable questions about what he was doing in the Auror section of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "Yeah, Ron, me too."

Ron clasped his shoulder for a moment longer, then stepped back and shook his head. "So you want me to just say that I didn't know it was coming, but it makes sense, with your craving for privacy and safety?" he murmured, barely moving his lips. Harry felt another flare of gratitude for Ginny. However she had convinced Ron that it would be better to be discreet, it was holding. Ron so far hadn't said a single thing relating to the marriage above a whisper.

"Yeah," Harry said back. "Malfoy doesn't know I told you lot the truth. And I'll never hear the end of it if he finds out."

Ron smiled at him, a bloodthirsty expression. "That's what Ginny said."

Harry relaxed a little more. Yes, he could see that, and it was the best tactic to take. Ron would be much more pleased with this stupid bloody farce of a marriage if he saw pretending ignorance of how it had really happened as a game to get one over on Malfoy. Once past the initial explosion, which he hadn't wanted to face last night, Harry was actually more worried about Hermione. She would help Ginny with research to find a way out of the bond, and she might be less than discreet with some of the questions that she asked.

"The rest of your family knows?" Harry asked in a murmur as he bent down and picked up the top file that lay on his desk. He'd deliberately been given light work today. Jansen had called him in to interrogate him, and then warned him that he had to remain free today to answer questions. _Only_ for today, because he did have a job to do, but Jansen was the kind of ruthlessly pragmatic Head Auror who thought it better to have one missed day of work than to have Harry dodging questions a week later.

Harry could see and admire the source of that pragmatism, but he did wish that he could sometimes escape having applied to him.

"Yeah," Ron says. "Dad and Mum are sorry for you, but they can keep that hidden. Charlie's out of the country, and Bill doesn't cross paths with Malfoy anyway. Percy gave this little speech about healing old wounds. George..." Ron's face darkened a little. "I don't know. I hope that he won't pull any pranks on Malfoy."

Harry winced and nodded. George had good days and bad days, but they were hard to tell apart until you found yourself in the middle of a prank that had deadly, instead of inconvenient, ways to go wrong.

"Good," he said. "I want my family with me through this, as long as they can endure it."

Ron smiled at him. "We _are_ your family," he said fervently, his hand dropping down to squeeze the back of Harry's left one. "The only one you'll ever need."

Harry opened his mouth to answer--he had the words all ready to go, the _right_ ones this time, unlike the aimless flailing he'd had to do with Narcissa last night--but just then, Ron's index finger brushed the ring.

A sharp glow of energy leaped into the air and formed a glittering curtain of sparks that extended from ceiling to floor, driving Ron and Harry apart. At the same moment, Ron swore furiously and shook his hand. Harry stared at it and saw smoke rising from the nails, while the fingers dangled limp, as paralyzed as Harry had felt yesterday afternoon when Malfoy used the rings on him.

"What the _fuck_?" Ron exploded.

"That's what happens when someone touches a marriage ring used by one of the old pure-blood families," chirped a voice from the corridor, and Auror Hilda Florenses learned around the door, eyes bright with excitement. "It makes sure that they can't touch. It's a symbol for the other non-touching that's supposed to go on." She giggled and stepped into their office. "Can I ask you some questions, Harry? I mean, it's just so _unexpected,_ and you have to give us the chance to ask, don't you? We didn't even know that you considered Malfoy enough of an ally to ask for a marriage like this!"

Harry shifted closer to Ron, but Ron gave the ring a wary glance, and Harry stopped with a sigh. He reckoned he could understand why Ron didn't want Harry touching him right now. Besides, the wall of sparks was fading, but still snapped warningly when Harry glanced at it. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to give the ring another excuse.

_Just one day, Jansen said. Answer questions, be "candid," and that will encourage people to run away with the information and gloat over it rather than asking me more all the time under the impression that I'm being secretive._

"Would anyone have believed it?" he asked with a wide, fake smile. He was good at fake smiles. He'd practiced them over and over again for three months. "But I met with Malfoy quietly. I knew that I would need _someone_ with wards strong enough to give me something like a normal life behind them, but I didn't know many people. And Malfoy and I have some connections, you know. We saved each other's lives during the war, and I fought with his wand."

Florenses giggled again and stepped closer. There were other Aurors behind her, listening, Harry saw. "Wow! Of course, I knew that." Harry doubted she had, because so few people had wanted to acknowledge Malfoy's part in the war and how Harry would never have won without him, but she went on before he could even roll his eyes. "But you didn't show anything of this extreme desire for privacy before. Does this have something to do with the scars on your back?"

Harry's smile froze, and his magic whipped out and coiled around Florenses's hands, dragging them behind her back and binding her wrists together. No one else could see anything, of course, but Harry could feel the tensed and tingling energy of the cuffs, and how they could stab into her body if he gave the word.

Florenses went silent and white, staring at him with large eyes, and two of the Aurors behind her stepped away suddenly enough to make people fall to the floor. "Calm down, mate," Ron was whispering somewhere, but Harry could hardly hear him behind the roaring rush of pain in his ears.

Pain originating in the scars.

Scars he would have to cover with a glamour, after all. He hadn't worn one so far because then someone would see it and get more curious about what it covered than they would with simple cloth, but he would have to start now. It was _intolerable_ that anyone should look at them for long, or touch them, or guess where they came from. The Ministry had helped him with covering up the other signs of what had happened. The least he could do was take responsibility for the traces left on his body.

It took more than the effort it had taken to talk to Narcissa yesterday, but Harry spread his fingers wide and called the magic back to him. It coiled into his body and burned there, rings of thorns that wanted to go surround someone else and sting them to death. Harry shook his head sharply. Then he focused on Florenses and said lightly, "Sorry about that. But the scars are part of something I can't talk about, and all the people who've asked me about them so far have been enemies who tried to kill me. I reacted before I thought about what I was doing."

Florenses nodded and muttered something that might have been acceptance of his apology, then retreated. The others Aurors behind her peered in once at Harry, then drew back, too. Harry sat down at his desk and put his head in his hands.

Ron cleared his throat. "Mate, you need to talk to someone--"

"Who?" Harry asked bitterly. "You and Hermione already know everything, and you're the only ones I feel comfortable telling."

Ron sighed windily and crouched down so he could catch Harry's eye. "You remember how sometimes in school, I was sort of a jerk?" he asked. "Envying you for getting to compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and when I thought that you'd let being a hero go to your head on the Horcrux hunt?"

"That wasn't you, that was the Horcrux," Harry said. He would point that out as many times as possible, as many times as needed. He thought Ron still hadn't forgiven himself for most of the "sins" he'd committed as a teenager, even though he'd been about a hundred times smarter and braver than most people Harry knew.

Ron flushed, but stared at him steadily until Harry nodded. "Of course I remember." Those years still burned brightly in his mind, better than almost anything since.

"I was an idiot as well as a jerk," Ron said. "I wouldn't want your life for anything. Seriously, why does all the bloody _weird_ shit happen to you?"

And Harry began to laugh in spite of himself, and Ron squeezed the one shoulder that wasn't scarred, and they went back to their work until the next questioner appeared and Harry had to spin the next part of his story. By then, the glamour was firmly in place above his scars, and his fake smile was better than ever.

*

Draco sighed and tossed back the hood of his cloak as he stepped inside the Manor at last. The best part of spending his day with Muggles was that no one had known about his marriage to ask about it. Some of them had eyed his ring, but they already thought Draco was eccentric anyway, given his preferred method of dress. Draco would, sometimes, admit that the company of Muggle business leaders and investors he needed to liaise with to maintain the Malfoy connections with various companies was more relaxing than the company of his own kind.

Particularly when the company of his own kind was Potter, currently having an argument with a house-elf in one corner of the entrance hall. Draco didn't think Potter had noticed him yet. He leaned a shoulder on the wall and listened in.

"...whatever Master Harry Malfoy asks," the elf was saying earnestly. "But wes cannot be leaving the room _dirties!_ Is impossible!"

"I'm not asking you to leave it dirty." Potter swept his fringe back from his forehead with one hand. The hand shook. Draco noticed blood around the nails and sneered. It made sense that Potter would have a habit of chewing on his cuticles. He hadn't grown up in _civilized_ surroundings, after all, which would have taught him not to do that. "I'm only asking you not to dust that particular section of the room. I don't want it disturbed."

"Oh, that section!" The elf stopped tugging on her ears. "Is simple, Master Harry Malfoy! Yous is only having to ask!"

Draco rolled his eyes, but Potter smiled as if the elf hadn't cost him some dirtying of his hands and nodded. "Thank you, Juli." Ignoring the way that the house-elf looked about to faint from his praise, he turned towards the stairs and froze when he noticed Draco.

"Malfoy," he said evenly. "I've been meaning to ask you. How much time do we need to spend in the same room, or the same house, so the marriage bond won’t punish us for violating its terms?"

Draco studied him with narrowed eyes, wondering if such a sensible question was a joke, but Potter only stared back, levelly. Draco let his eyes wander to the git's robe collar, and saw unmarked skin there. Well, of course Potter would be sensitive about how ugly he was, around the beauties of the Manor.

"I looked it up this morning," Draco said at last, after thinking of and discarding several reasons not to answer. _Granger probably told him to ask it._ "Sleeping here was considered most important for a marriage--the ideal of sleeping in the same bed and establishing a bond being in play then, of course. If you spend your nights here, that should be sufficient."

Potter nodded. "And when I'm gone overnight on a case?"

"Don't make a habit of it," Draco said, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

But Potter's eyes just went distant, as if he were concentrating on a solution to the problem that had nothing to do with Draco, and then he turned away and walked up the stairs.

Draco blinked after him, unsettled. So many things were just as he would have expected: Potter's looks, his personal habits, the ingratitude for his rooms that his mother had told Draco about over lunch this afternoon--and Draco didn't know why she thought it was a symptom of some deeper problem; to Draco, it was only Potter being Potter--and his refusal to understand what a marriage bond really was and meant.

And then there was the way he suppressed his temper most of the time and asked sensible questions. 

Draco shrugged and sent an elf to retrieve the _Daily Prophet._ It was time to see how badly Potter had fouled up his first public presentation as a Malfoy.


	5. At the Same Table

“You’re not leaving without breakfast, are you, Harry?”

Harry started and turned around. He hadn’t expected any of the Malfoys to be up when he needed to leave; apparently it was the decadent aristocratic thing to lounge in one’s bed all day and have meals brought to one. But Narcissa stood behind him, wearing another ice-colored gown and a warm smile that contrasted with everything Harry had experienced here so far.

“I had Juli bring me a scone,” Harry said. He could deal with _her._ Malfoy and his father were best avoided, but then again, Harry hadn’t seen Lucius since the day he enacted the marriage bond. “And a glass of milk,” he added, because Narcissa’s smile had turned a bit fixed. Perhaps the Malfoys had stores of food that would go bad if someone didn’t consume them. It was the only explanation Harry could think of that would make sense of her expression.

“A scone is not breakfast,” Narcissa said. “Not an adequate breakfast for someone like you, who fights danger all day.” She looked up and down Harry’s body with a frown, as though she could see his muscles softening and withering away.

Harry felt a moment’s conviction that she could, that she would see what he had looked like when he came out of the darkness. But he averted his eyes a moment later instead of taking a step back like he wanted to. She didn’t know that, he reminded himself. No one did except the Minister and his best friends, and the Minister had already spread rumors to allay the panic that would have resulted if someone outside that select group knew that Harry Potter had been missing for three months.

“I won’t be doing any chasing today,” he said. “Just ordinary Auror work. Sitting at a desk and pushing papers around.” He started to add that they had all sorts of food at the Ministry, but choked the impulse back. What was he, a five-year-old trying to defend his eating choices to his mother? Even if he had married into the Malfoy family legitimately, he wouldn’t have needed Narcissa to play that role for him.

Narcissa sighed as though someone had poked her in the stomach. “Truly, Harry, this is not a threat,” she said. “I told you that you were ours while the bond lasts, and that means that we are responsible for your care and feeding.”

Harry restrained the tendency to snap that he wasn’t a Crup, and thought about it from that point-of-view. Yes, he reckoned he could see that. The Malfoys had their pride, and someone would notice and be all too glad to print a story about how they were “mistreating” Harry if he looked a little gaunt.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll use glamours to make sure that no one sees anything different about me from usual but the ring.”

Narcissa’s mouth tightened. Harry watched her hands, but she didn’t appear to be putting them anywhere near her wand, wherever she _had_ the wand under that gown. She met his eyes and shook her head, once.

“You are a hard man to help, Harry,” she said.

Harry felt his face heat up, and did his best to shrug and smile. “I just—I’m not comfortable here.” He didn’t think that he was giving away too much with that revelation, since she already knew it from watching his reaction to his rooms. “I thought I would spend as much time out of the Manor as I possibly could. Draco said that I only need to sleep here for the bond to be satisfied.”

“But there is also the matter of human satisfaction,” Narcissa said, and drew near enough to put a hand on his arm. Harry saw her coming, so he didn’t lash out the way he wanted, but it was still hard. He didn’t trust much of anyone now, and he found Narcissa’s attitude alien. She _knew_ this wasn’t real, so trying to pretend it was made no sense to Harry. “I would like to see you eating, healthy, happy.”

“I _do_ eat,” Harry said, but he felt like a sulky child in the face of her stare, and after a moment he nodded. “I’ll ask Juli for more breakfast tomorrow.”

“And you’ll come to dinner tonight.” Narcissa seemed to realize she would waste too much time asking him for breakfast. She left her hand in place like a chain. It felt heavier than the ring on Harry’s finger.

“Yeah, all right,” Harry said, with a duck of his head and a miserable twitch of his shoulders. He had promised to have dinner with Hermione and Ginny tonight, so they could tell him what they had discovered about breaking the bond, but they weren’t here right now to make him feel bad, while Narcissa was. He could grab a quick lunch with Ginny instead. He’d like to spend some time with her.

“Excellent.” Narcissa stepped away from him and walked to the other side of the immense entrance hall. Harry sighed and beat a retreat to the opposite side, trying not to _look_ as if he was retreating.

“Harry.”

Harry stopped and glanced over his shoulder. Narcissa was framed in a pointed doorway that led to a dining room, her eyes on him gentle and knowing, both.

“This is not a war,” she said softly. “You need not fear us. You need not think that I will lash out and drive you away because my husband had the bad taste to force this issue.”

Harry only nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he feared her husband and son a lot more than he did her. Or to tell her that it was the whole world that didn’t seem to have safe corners left, after the darkness.

“I’m glad to see that nod,” Narcissa said. “The next time, you might try a smile.”

She surprised one out of him just then, but she had the good sense not to press. Instead, she smiled back, stepped inside the dining room, and closed the door behind her.

Harry shook his head and settled his ruffled feathers as much as he could. He couldn’t take this mood into work with him, where Ron would want to know what he was smiling about and be displeased when Harry told him it was a conversation with his mother-in-law.

_I should never have a mother-in-law unless it’s Molly Weasley._

He stepped out of the Manor, and left behind the Harry Potter Narcissa wanted to see eating. (Such a bizarre idea that they should care about his meals. But then, Molly was the same way. Harry reckoned it was some leftover mothering instinct).

*

“You have to admit that it’s a brilliant match.”

Draco grimaced and tilted back his glass, pouring more of the scented cordial that Pansy favored down his throat. This month, it was the rough flavor of ashes and something dark beneath them that didn’t explode into fire until it reached Draco’s stomach. It had a kick stronger than brandy, which made it exactly what Draco needed right now. 

“I didn’t choose him for his looks, or his prowess in bed,” he said. “Only for his money. That means I _could_ have chosen better.”

Pansy smiled at him. She was wearing a robe that, as usual at this time of the day, barely concealed her breasts. Her dark hair was still tied with a red ribbon; given the trailing edges and the stains, Draco reckoned it had come from last night. She had shining white shoulders and long white hands with brilliant red nails, and she showed them off to advantage as she leaned across the table and poured him another glass.

Draco turned his head to the side. The time to be attracted to Pansy and to do something about it had come and gone. Pansy had made it clear more than once that she wouldn’t mind extending the fun they had to the bed, but Draco wanted a lover who he _didn’t_ have to worry would exhaust him in all possible ways.

“You can tell me, Draco,” she said.

“What?” Draco stared at her. Pansy was too much of a gossip for him to be comfortable telling her the truth, but she might have guessed it.

“Does Potter fuck like a lion?” she purred, leaning forwards so that her robe shifted again.

Draco controlled the flinch he wanted to give. That would only hand Pansy more ammunition, and he was not in the mood for that. Besides, confirming that he fucked Potter and that he didn’t fuck him would both have their disadvantages, and offer more cracks in his armor for Pansy to sink her claws in.

He sighed instead and looked away from her. “You should know better than that,” he said. “Use his new last name to refer to him, or his first name if you must. If you _must_ ,” he repeated, turning back to her with his lip curled and his eyes clearly showing his boredom.

Pansy uttered a small shriek of laughter. “Can you imagine me calling him _Malfoy_ every time I want to refer to him? Someone listening to us would think that I sometimes thought of you one way and sometimes the other!”

Draco didn’t see what was so funny about it, but he made himself open his mouth in a small, soundless laugh of his own, because Pansy would take it worse if he didn’t seem amused at her joke. He was glad that she had other endearing qualities besides her sense of humor. _That_ wouldn’t save her on a dare.

“All right, Draco, I won’t ask any more questions about your marriage if you’re as sensitive as all that.” Pansy took another sip of her cordial and leaned back on the couch, watching him with slitted eyes. “But be sure that you come over here often. I’ll want to hear all about how His Majesty is getting on in Malfoy Manor. D’you think it’s grand enough for him? He’s _the_ Savior, after all, used to the wonders of the world being piled at his feet.”

Draco snorted. “You know the sort he is, Pansy. Too noble to reach out and grasp at all the young things offering him their bodies. He looks down his nose at me for having more than one bedroom. He isn’t used to money.”

Pansy sat up straight and clapped her hands. “That gives me an idea! A gift. He should have a wedding gift, to welcome him to a world that he must think is horribly decadent and only a haunt of pure-bloods like us.”

Draco eyed her. “Possibly,” he said. “But I don’t want a gift that embarrasses me. I didn’t marry him for that.”

Pansy waved one hand. “Just think what wonderful opportunities your marriage provides for your friends,” she said. “I’m sure that you won’t begrudge me a laugh or two.”

“It depends entirely on the gift,” Draco said, and drew himself up. “I mean it, Pansy. Don’t give him something that would embarrass me.”

Pansy locked her eyes with his, hard and measuring. Draco looked back, and fought to make sure that he didn’t flinch, any more than he had at her joke about fucking earlier. Pansy would attack if she sensed weakness, and Draco was the public face of the Malfoy family now. He had inherited decades earlier than he would have otherwise, and he had to show his friends, as he did everyone else, that he was strong enough to stand out of Lucius’s shadow.

This time, he seemed to have convinced her that he had that strength. Pansy relaxed and smiled at him. “I’ll think of something perfect,” she said. “I hope that you won’t be disappointed if the gift doesn’t arrive for a fortnight or so.”

Draco smiled. “Not at all,” he said. “That gives me the time to anticipate the expression on his face when he opens it.”

Pansy leaned across the table to toast him. Draco listened to the clink of their glasses and tried to find hope in the sound, as if it were a bell tolling out a forecast of how long his marriage would last. Draco had not spoken to his father since he forced the bond, but he knew that Lucius had to lose patience eventually. That was the quality Draco most strove to eliminate from his own being: the frantic need to have his own way, which would ensure that he leaped before he needed to all his life.

One earned rewards by waiting.

This time, Draco intended to earn the reward of a house empty of Potter and one full of Astoria.

*

“It’s not encouraging.”

Harry winced and leaned back in his chair, although he had expected the news from the moment Ginny strode into the small, private room at the back of the Hog’s Head to meet him. Harry disliked using his name to earn favors, but he had paid Aberforth extra, and it was important that no one see them. “I saw that in your face,” he said.

Ginny sat down across from him and sighed. Today, she was wearing a set of blue robes that made her look like a vision out of heaven. Harry swallowed his longing. She wouldn’t let him kiss her while he was still married. He _had_ to wait, and thinking about what he couldn’t have would do nothing to improve either his temper or his libido.

“Is my family lower in status than the Malfoys, then?” he asked.

Ginny held up a hand and tilted it back and forth like a seesaw. “In a way,” she said. “It fluctuates with the centuries. The Malfoys usually have more money, but they also have a talent for getting themselves in trouble with the Ministry.”

Harry snorted. “I see that hasn’t deserted them.”

“No.” Ginny picked up a folder and spread it out on the table. Harry glimpsed several maps and genealogical tables before Ginny spread out a report written in a neat hand and bent over it. “The last time that someone used the forced marriage bond, this is how your families stood in relation to each other.”

Harry began to read. Whoever had written the report had the same kind of dry style that the Auror Department encouraged their trainees to use when writing essays about proper procedures for arrest, which meant he was soon skimming. Some of the references to other books and laws didn’t make sense for him, but he got the gist of it. In particular, the underlined sentences at the bottom of the page made sense to him.

_The Malfoys stood higher in both public regard and in terms of property owned at the time that the last forced marriage bond took place between them. The Potters were not able to reclaim their heiress, and eventually she accepted the bond and bore the Malfoy heir children that became part of his line. The Potters undertook a magical ritual that designated a second cousin as heir so that their line would not die out._

Harry grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. That acceptance was not going to happen to him, especially since he couldn’t make a _real_ family with the Malfoys. He sighed and sat back in his seat. “Thanks, Ginny. That means I can’t make a legal challenge, right?”

Ginny shook her head and reached out to gather up the report. “No. There might be magical answers, though. Hermione is working on those.” She paused, and her eyes darted up to his face. Harry blinked at her, suddenly realizing that the tension in her shoulders might come from more than one source. He wasn’t the _whole_ of Ginny’s life. He knew that, but it was something he had the tendency to forget.

“What?” he asked.

“Why did you cancel our date?” Ginny asked.

“I told you—”

“You told me Narcissa Malfoy invited you for dinner.” She leaned forwards and traced the grain in the wood of the table. “You didn’t tell me why you accepted.”

Harry blinked. He had somehow just assumed that Ginny would know that. She seemed to know more about him than he did, most of the time. But her steady stare and folded arms said that she didn’t, not on this occasion.

It wasn’t a hardship for Harry to give in to her request and say, “Because she was there. Because she was asking. She’s been nice to me, the only Malfoy who has. I don’t think it’ll cause any trouble. She’ll probably take one look at me in the same room as her husband and son, and decide that it’s not worth trying again,” he added, hoping to win a smile from Ginny.

She gave him a faint one and shook her head. “Let’s hope that she does,” she murmured, and picked up another folder. “This is the first of the magical solutions that Hermione came up with. If we could—”

She cut herself off as Harry took her hand. Harry was careful to make it his right hand, so that the ring couldn’t come into contact with her skin, but there was something he wanted to clarify before they went any further. 

“Why does this disturb you?” he asked quietly, rubbing her knuckles. “Mrs. Malfoy isn’t the one I’m married to.”

Ginny gave him a strained, tense smile. “Yes, but Harry, all the records I could find of these forced marriages said that those who were married gave in in the end. The Malfoys can offer you more than I can. Luxury, and a family who’s not large, so they can give you more attention, and money, and…”

She trailed off again, this time, Harry knew, because of the smile on his face. He shook his head. “Do you think any of those things _matter_ to me, against the love I have for you and your family?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Ginny said.

Harry winced. He had hoped that she would have more faith in him than that. 

“Maybe there was some sort of magical compulsion that came along with the forced marriage,” he said. “But it wasn’t having to work against personal hatred between the Malfoy heir and the other heir, I think, and it’s not like—it’s not like I _want_ to stay there. I was raised by a family who never got me used to luxury, so it’s not like I would be tempted by it. Their family is creepy, and I don’t want it. And I have money of my own.” He squeezed her fingers. “Please, Ginny, will you stop worrying? I’m not going to betray you to be with Malfoy. There’s nothing I want less than to be with him, nothing I want more than to be with you.”

After a long moment, Ginny’s fingers relaxed in his. She bowed her head. “I do know that, Harry,” she said. “But I spent all morning reading the historical records of the forced marriages and seeing each one end the way the Malfoys wanted it to. That makes me a little nervous. Sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Harry said fervently, wishing he could kiss her. Damn bloody Lucius, anyway. “You’re doing what no one else in the Malfoy family is doing right now. You’re _helping_ me. Because you love me. I’ll always choose the one who loves me and who I love, Ginny. Gold and silver doors can’t compete with that.”

Ginny’s mouth curved up in a slow smile. “Gold and silver doors?”

Harry shuddered and rolled his eyes. “It’s ridiculous. You wonder how much they paid for that thing. And it’s the door of a guest room! Why couldn’t they keep the stupid, over-the-top luxury for themselves?”

Ginny laughed this time, and left her hand in his as she started pointing out the magical factors they should watch for. Harry relaxed and listened to her voice more than the words, knowing that he would need to study the notes for himself before he could hope to understand them anyway, and then probably listen to a second reading of them from Hermione.

He was lucky to have such wonderful friends and such a wonderful woman to love.

So what if he was separated from them by this forced marriage for right now? It would end soon enough, and then he would have what he had always wanted.

*

Potter had _atrocious_ table manners.

Draco watched him from the corner of his eye, trying not to show how much he wanted to sneer, because that would also be ill-bred, and there was enough ill-breeding in the room right now. Potter didn’t know the proper way to eat his salad. He stared at his soup as if he’d never seen it before and shot obvious glances at the spoon Draco was using. Draco angled his body so that Potter’s line of sight was blocked, and then regretted it when Potter acted on his own. Letting Potter copy him would have been better than the slurping noises that resulted.

His mother kept up a flood of light, effortless small talk. Potter mostly grunted in response. He jumped when the house-elves Apparated in, and he thanked them much more than he should. Draco was getting tired of house-elf tears in his dishes.

“Stop it, Potter,” he snapped the third time that happened, when the ancient elf he’d thanked nearly dropped the platter of quail. “You should _know_ that they don’t really like to be thanked, no matter what your Mudblood friend may have said.”

Potter turned towards him even as his mother hissed a warning against rudeness. Draco leaned forwards across the table, more than eager to begin a blazing row. He hated this forced, unnatural quietness between them. They were meant to be fighting, and the price of presenting a respectable face to the world was that Draco burned with unused aggression when he got home and saw his “husband.”

But though Potter’s eyes flashed once, he turned his head away in the next second and answered Narcissa’s question about his Auror work with a few simple words. Draco blinked, then settled back in his chair and studied Potter more closely. There were other things to learn about him than his bad manners if he could ignore a provocation like that.

What he noticed more than anything else, after watching for a bit, was how wary Potter was. Coiled tension brimmed in his muscles, his shoulders, his gut. He smiled with his lips alone, as if he had forgotten how to involve his eyes. He kept his gaze on everyone’s hands without seeming to notice that he did so.

Draco tilted his head to the side. Paranoia made sense for an Auror, but he had dined with them before and hadn’t noticed this level. Did it come from a youth spent in war, as well, which most of the Aurors hadn’t possessed?

“Please tell me.”

And while he watched, his mother had started an intense, low-voiced conversation with Potter that was more important than the rest. Potter squinted at her, then turned his head decisively back and forth. He put out one hand as though he would push back from the table and stand.

Draco’s mother covered it with one of hers. Draco smiled as Potter stared at it. It was hard for someone to resist Narcissa’s personal touch, and stronger men than Potter had resumed their meals or agreed to dance rather than storming out of the room at a simple brush of her fingers.

But Potter didn’t sit back down. He answered her, though, voice weary and warm. “Thank you, Narcissa, nothing, really. I’m just not comfortable here, and it has nothing to do with your hospitality.” He turned his head to glance at Draco. “I think your son would agree with me. I don’t _belong_ here. Changing my rooms or increasing the amount of food I eat or getting me a different house-elf won’t solve that.”

Draco surged to his feet. Potter whipped towards him, one hand falling to his wand. Draco forced himself to breathe and remain still for a moment.

And to think about why Potter’s words had roused him. Why should he care if Potter was uncomfortable? He did agree, in fact, that the changes his mother had likely proposed would give Potter no real understanding of their blood or family.

But the wards and the understanding they wrote in his bones, as the head of the Malfoy family, said that Potter was wrong. He belonged here. And Draco would show him so.

“Follow me,” he snapped at Potter, and strode across to the far door. Potter hesitated, then went after him. His mother, knowing good sense when she saw it, remained at the table. His father hadn’t bothered to attend this dinner.

“Going to duel me?” Potter’s voice was low when he caught Draco up in the entrance hall.

Draco didn’t bother to look over his shoulder. “Can’t duel each other with the marriage bond involved,” he said, and flung open one of the doors that led into the gardens. “Come with me if you want to see why you belong here.”

Potter waited inside for a long moment, but in the end, Draco heard him succumb to curiosity and come out. Draco smiled as he listened to the _pad-crunch_ of Potter’s footsteps in the soft, wet grass.

He would show the officious Auror, the Ministry’s darling, the public’s pet, that he could not sneer at the Malfoy family. They were greater than he could ever understand.

And he was part of them now, whether he liked it or not.


	6. Feeling the Same Emotion

Harry kept his senses alert as he followed Malfoy across the darkened gardens. There was a faint rain falling, which tended to muffle the sounds and scents around him, or rather replace them with the sound and scent of itself, but he knew that they were moving to the west because he could see a faint glow of sunset light directly ahead of them. He glanced over his shoulder and confirmed the position of the house, as dark and featureless in this weather as a boulder.

Then he made out the faint edges of balconies and of high windows, and turned away with a scowl.

Malfoy slammed to a halt and turned back to look at him. Harry showed him a bland expression in the face of whatever the git was going to blame him for now. He hadn’t cast a spell since they came out of the house, hadn’t done anything wrong, and hadn’t done anything wrong in the _first_ place. If Malfoy was trying to prove that his family was too noble to be sullied by Harry’s presence or something, he was doing a poor job.

Malfoy ground his teeth and said, “It’s over here, and you’ll have to use your ring to enter it.”

Harry drew in his breath to ask what _it_ was, since he could only make out rainy darkness ahead of them, and then saw a dark shape separate itself from the rain. He would have taken it for a large bush, perhaps sculpted in the shape of a dragon, but Malfoy walked towards it slowly and reverently, and Harry had never seen him show that kind of attitude towards plants unless they were rare Potions ingredients. He followed, slowly.

Malfoy reached out and laid his ring on the stone in front of him. That it was stone Harry knew from the faint _tink_ the metal of the ring made as it met it. “Draco Malfoy,” he said, and the shape shuddered and seemed to rotate. Harry squinted. He still couldn’t make out what it was, especially with the streaks the storm was leaving on his glasses.

Malfoy turned towards him, moving back so that he stood parallel to the shape at the same time. Harry blinked harder, trying to make out whether any light was coming from inside it, but could see nothing. “You have to use your ring and your name to enter it,” he said. “Your true name.”

Harry didn’t give him a hateful look, because it would be wasted in the darkness. He held up his ring and tapped it randomly on what was probably fine marble, because everything in the Manor seemed to be made of marble that wasn’t made of wood or cloth. “Harry—Malfoy,” he said, leaving the long pause so that Malfoy would at least have _some_ idea of how reluctant he was to do this.

 _I’m not a Malfoy. I’m nothing like them. They ought to be kicking me out of here for having the bad taste to be born to the “wrong sort._ ”

There came a soft groan from in front of him, and Harry staggered; he hadn’t realized how much of his weight he’d been leaning on the hand with the ring. Warmth and a thick, sweet scent blew out around him. He moved cautiously forwards.

The space filled with light so sudden that Harry almost jerked back. Only the knowledge that Malfoy was watching kept him moving as he should. He knew that this light should have been visible from beyond the door, and that it hadn’t been argued for the presence of powerful, subtle magic.

The space was larger than he had thought it would be, and as smooth on the inside walls as a mausoleum. Harry smiled a bit when he saw that he had been right and it _was_ marble. He turned to Malfoy, opening his mouth to point out that he didn’t think this was a place that would prove anything to him. So he’d had to use his married name to enter it. All that proved was that the magic was as stubborn and stupid as a lot of other things in the Manor.

And then he lost the breath he was gathering to say that, and simply stared.

Malfoy leaned against the wall, giving him a smug look. Above his head was a niche in the wall, and in it stood a statue that Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to see flush with life, it was carved so skillfully. The woman had long, braided hair, and stood with her hands held out flat as though someone had taken a platter from them. The skirts she wore rippled around her legs, and Harry could see tiny folds in them that made him blink and shake his head, hoping the woman really _had_ been carved and not Transfigured into stone.

There was a legend at the bottom of the niche, delicate letters that spelled out the words _Caroline Malfoy._

“Everyone who has been part of the family is here,” Malfoy said softly. “Their statues change over the years, over their lives, and then reflect what they look like at the time of their death.” He paused, as though waiting for Harry to say something.

Harry swallowed. “Well. It’s beautiful. But I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

Malfoy nodded to something behind him. Harry turned around, his hand falling to his wand out of habit.

There were other people carved in the walls, some near enough that Harry could make out every detail as he could with the statue of Caroline, others more distant. But the closest statue made him take the step backwards this time, even though it was right in the clear white light that seemed to shine from the carved eyes, which meant Malfoy could see it all.

 _He_ was on a niche in the wall, too.

Harry tensed, and tried not to let Malfoy see it. Malfoy might be able to guess the reason. Harry stepped towards the statue, and thought that the carved eyes shifted to look at him. But when he peered into them more extensively, he relaxed. No, they were simple stone and couldn’t move.

Not that there was anything _simple_ about this, really.

Harry had never thought he looked like that from the outside. His glasses and his scar seemed to dominate his face, although the scar was faded on the statue’s forehead the same way it was faded on his own, and he wondered how people managed to look elsewhere. At the same time, though, it was kind of nice to know that the weariness he felt wouldn’t be the first thing everyone automatically saw.

He was wearing Auror robes, and he had his wand in his hand and his shoulder turned to the side as though he was coming around in a long sweep, preparing to knock down some airborne enemy. Harry stood on tiptoes as if he was looking at the wand, but his eyes darted to the statue’s back. The collar of the robes was pulled down a little from the neck. If he had to cast another glamour—

Nothing. There were no scars on his back there.

Harry exhaled in relief and what he could admit was a strange form of envy. He ran a hand through his hair and turned to look at Malfoy.

“Impressive,” he said. “But I don’t know why you brought me here to show me it.” 

Especially because at least one of Malfoy’s claims had been proven wrong. The statues didn’t track _every_ change that happened to a person. If one kept them secret, Harry thought, they didn’t show up. So the magic operated based on public perception, not reality.

Then again, Harry had always known the Malfoys were like that.

*

Draco stared at Potter. He had thought Potter was many things in the past few days—uncivilized, irritating, dangerous, unusually sensible—but never _slow._

“It means you belong here,” he said. “With us. With them.” He waved his hand at the rest of the statues. “You’re family. The marriage is real.”

Potter sighed and leaned back on the wall as though Draco’s words had taken all the strength from his limbs for some reason. “We both know that it’s not real,” he said. “Why would we be courting the women we want to marry if it was?”

“Not real in that sense,” Draco said, and shuddered. “I want to faint when I think of spending the rest of my life with you.”

“Oh, really?” Potter gave him a fleeting grin. “That’s an improvement over the dry heaves that I get when I think about spending all that time with _you_.”

Draco gritted his teeth and told himself not to be distracted into banter. It might be more comfortable than argument, but it was no more natural, and he had brought Potter here to acknowledge his point, not deflect it. “Real in the sense that the marriage bond means something to the family’s magic, even if it’s forced,” he said. “That’s what I wanted you to learn. You’re tied to the wards. You have a place within the house. It is our concern if you live, if you die, what you eat, how you rest, how healthy you are.”

“No, it’s not.” Potter’s voice had lowered, and Draco wondered if he was imagining the intensity in it. His hand had closed on nothing, as if he held an invisible wand in front of himself. Draco eyed him warily, but Potter didn’t move closer; he just looked glassily into the distance. Draco knew he wasn’t admiring the statue of Caroline Malfoy, although it was in front of him with the way his head was pointing.

“Yes, it is,” Draco said, and then paused to play those last two statements over in his head. They sounded like a pair of arguing children. He wanted more dignity than that for himself, at least. Dignity wasn’t something the Malfoy family was compelled to provide for all its members. “The house thinks you belong to it. The magic has created a statue of you because you’re the current heir’s husband. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

Potter closed his eyes fully and ducked his head for a moment, as though he was standing up to the blast of a harsh wind. Draco wanted to shake his head, but the gesture would be wasted if Potter didn’t see it. So, instead, he waited until Potter spoke in a near-whisper.

“No. Do you want to know why?”

`”I’m sure you’ll tell me whether I want to know or not.” Draco turned his back and studied the distant wall, wondering whether the expression on Sebastian Malfoy’s face had always been that constipated or if he had died at an unfortunate moment. It was a long time since he had read that particular tale among his ancestors’ records.

“My family is dead,” Potter said. “What I have left is the blood I carry in my veins, the money in my vaults, the deeds I do, and the family I _chose_. I’m going to marry into the Weasleys, but my family will still have the Potter blood and name.”

Draco turned back to stare at him. That sounded like something he could hear a pure-blood saying, but there was also a strange edge to it. He stood there a moment in silence, trying to work it out.

Potter went on before he could, and his next words sent Draco’s thoughts scattering like a startled flock of pigeons. “I don’t want anything from you. _Nothing_ you can do will give me children of my own blood. You’ve even _changed my name_ , not to mention absorbed my vaults.” His eyes came back to Draco, and they were more hostile than Draco could ever remember seeing them, even when he and Potter were both at Hogwarts. “I don’t want your _care._ I’ve got along fine for fifteen years with my friends and the Weasleys to care for me. And no one said that we had to cooperate in private, only in public, because that’s all your father cares about. Take your bloody _care_ and shove it up your overly-fine arse.”

He turned and stalked out of the collection. Draco stood there, feeling as if he had become his own image in marble, before he ran after him. Potter was trudging back to the house as if he were the one who had to bear all the weight of the world on his shoulders. He probably missed being the poor little Savior whom everyone always coddled and forgave because of the burden of saving the world that he carried, Draco thought savagely. 

He caught up with Potter and spun him around, using one hand. He thought he heard Potter’s robe rip, but he didn’t care. He was too caught up in his rage, and his wonder that Potter could turn his back on a heritage so rich and various.

“You idiot,” he said, and although he tried to control his voice, it burst past his control soon enough. “You _fucker._ Do you think that this is any easier for me, forced into a marriage with someone who’s always despised me rather than married to the woman I want to share my life and bloodline with?”

“Yes,” Potter snapped at him.

That took Draco aback the way Potter’s rejection of the Malfoy heritage had, and he remained still, giving Potter the chance to reply again instead of shutting up before the flood of Draco’s eloquence.

“You have your family. You have your home. You’re living with the people who support you, and you weren’t forced to move out of a place that’s come to feel like home to you.”

“Your flat can’t have been as nice as our Manor,” Draco muttered, but the retort was weak and swept aside by Potter’s impatient arm movement as much as his next words.

“Yes, fine, it’s nice. But the bed being soft and the curtains being thick doesn’t make up for being _here_. Nor does being able to change the colors of the room when I like. Oh, I accept your mother means well, Malfoy. I know your father doesn’t and you don’t, but at least I’m not without allies here. The problem is, nothing you can offer is something I want.”

“Name one thing that you haven’t been offered since you came here,” Draco said, taking a step away and folding his arms. “Name one thing that we couldn’t get for you, even with the forced marriage bond constraining some of our actions.”

“Freedom and an engagement ring for Ginny.”

Draco growled and rubbed his face. Of course Potter’s newfound maturity would desert him when he was angry. “I thought I explained to you that there are some things we simply have to endure so that my father will get bored with tormenting us—”

“I’m tolerating them, Malfoy.” Potter’s voice was so low that Draco backed up an instinctive step before he thought about it. It sounded like the warning cough from a tiger before it charged. “I’m here instead of staying away on purpose until the bond starts hurting us. That counts as toleration, doesn’t it? Just because I won’t accept your gifts doesn’t mean that I’ll break and run. But you asked me whether I was satisfied or honored to be a part of your little rock collection, and the answer is no. Of course not.”

“You said that you want children and your name,” Draco said. “You’ll have them. Not right now, but in a little while. I’m not asking you to sacrifice anything there that I don’t have to sacrifice as well.” He paused, and thought again about what Potter had said. This time, he thought he could identify the abnormality.

“I know that you value love and family,” he said quietly. “Why do you think and talk of your children as a pure-blood would? Why are you valuing them so much more for what they can contribute to the family than for their _existence,_ their presence?”

Potter looked lost for the first time since he had ventured into the Manor. His hands opened, and he peered at Draco as if he had said something sensible at last. “I don’t—what do you mean? I want children because I want to be part of a family. Because I’m a poor little orphan and that’s what happens to all poor little orphans, don’t you know? Is _that_ the reason you thought I’d want to be part of the Malfoys? Because I don’t have parents, and you thought I’d welcome yours with open arms?”

Draco moved nearer. “I won’t let you distract me from this,” he said. “It’s odd to me that you would think about your children that way, yes, but I didn’t realize until now _how_ odd it was. It’s as though—as though you think of yourself as a link in a chain between your parents and their grandchildren, but you don’t value yourself at all. You’re your name and vaults, and nothing else. I’m familiar with that habit of thought from some of my friends who feel that they failed their families during the war, but from _you_? I don’t believe it.”

Potter coiled with tension, much the same way he had at dinner, but didn’t respond. Draco waited, his heart beating hard, his mind curiously blank. He honestly didn’t know what would happen next.

*

Harry felt his heartbeat shiver him. What Malfoy said wasn’t true of him—Harry had never particularly thought of himself one way or the other, not like that—but he was thinking about Ginny.

_Is that all she is to me? A mother of my children and no more?_

No, that couldn’t be so, Harry reassured himself instantly. He remembered his longing to kiss Ginny when he saw her that afternoon. If she was just a means to an end for him, then he wouldn’t feel so strongly for her.

But he might treat her like that even if he didn’t intend to. It _was_ strange that the minute he found his chance of children and keeping his name threatened, he got that angry. As Malfoy said, the marriage wouldn’t last forever. Why couldn’t he take it calmly? Why was he burning on the edge of what felt like madness some of the time, and the rest of the time convinced that he would never get free because Lucius would never yield?

The answer ran down into darkness. 

_Because I nearly wasn’t around to object one way or the other three months ago. I could die, and with me all the chances would die for my family, since I’m the only member left._

Harry wrenched himself forcibly from those thoughts. They would just have to lie alone, he thought. He wasn’t following them. He wasn’t going to allow the darkness that much hold over him. It had defined a certain period in his life, and now it was over. He had made sure of that.

“I think you’re wrong,” he told Malfoy. “It’s an unfortunate way to talk, but I do want a family, and I do want children of my own, and I don’t want children named Malfoy. I think all those are perfectly natural wants.” He turned his head away and started to walk towards the Manor again, making himself go slowly although the muscles in his calves quivered. If he could convince Malfoy he was normal, then he stood a chance of actually behaving that way at the moment.

Malfoy caught his arm. Harry stopped, but kept looking at the house, a softly glowing shape in the darkness. Harry wondered if that came from the wards or the sheer number of lights the house-elves must keep going. Harry thought of lamps and fires flaring in unused rooms for the convenience of three people—four, with him added—and snorted. Yet another difference between them he would never understand. What was the _point_ of having rooms that you would never use?

“You puzzle me, Potter,” Malfoy said softly. “You puzzle me so much that I want to talk to you further, and understand.”

“And if this was Hogwarts and Professor Dumbledore was still alive, I’m sure he would applaud your commitment to House unity,” Harry deadpanned back, and pulled his arm free. “But as it is, I don’t want to do anything that would make you feel uncomfortable. I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t _have_ to do.” He marched towards the Manor with military precision, wondering if Malfoy would criticize his lack of grace.

Malfoy snarled and caught up with him again. Harry could feel the git’s gaze on the side of his face. He ignored it with relative ease. Just because someone looked at him didn’t mean he had to respond. That had been one of the hardest lessons he had to learn. It used to be that one of his Auror trainers could upset him with a stare that went on too long. Now, he knew better.

“Do you always reject sympathy that prissily?” Malfoy asked. “I’m less amazed now that you have so few friends, and have to wonder at you having that many.”

Harry sighed. He hated being the one who had to explain this to Malfoy. Why didn’t he _understand_ it, when he had been the one to propose this course of action in the first place? “Yes, when it involves you asking about things that don’t concern you and aren’t real, like the way you think I think about my future children. We ignore each other when we can, we have civil conversations when we can’t, and we wait for the end of this bond. When your father sees that you’re not angry anymore, that you’re perfectly indifferent to me, don’t you think that he’ll release the bond?”

Malfoy caught his arm again, this time with enough force to spin him around. Harry went, because the alternative was letting his Auror defensive instincts take over and put Malfoy flat on his back on the earth, but he stared hard, and didn’t relent when Malfoy leaned towards him and he could smell the sweetness of dinner on the bastard’s breath.

“I’m not indifferent to you,” Malfoy sad. “I never have been. My father knows that. It’s part of the reason that he chose you to bond me to.”

Harry sighed again. He was tired of this conversation, weary as he always was these days when evening came around. He wanted to go into his room and draw the bed curtains so that he could pretend the room was a normal size and the fire was the normal, tame one on his own hearth. “Fine. I don’t care. I apologize for whatever way I stepped on your toes just now. But what I said still stands.”

“I offered you sympathy. You rejected it.”

Harry blinked at him from the corner of one eye. If he didn’t know better, didn’t know that Malfoy would never express such emotions in front of him, he would have said that Malfoy was _hurt_. But no, that couldn’t be—and if he thought he really had offered Harry sympathy, Harry wouldn’t trust his perceptions of his own emotions anyway.

“You asked me questions,” Harry said. “Not really the same thing.” He picked up the pace again, and this time left Malfoy behind. He didn’t stop until he was in his rooms, and could shut the door behind him. At least the birch wood, if not the gold and silver inlay, had taken his protective spells well. He turned to renew them, rubbing his stomach. The too-rich dinner sat uneasily on it, as he had known it would.

*

Draco was still staring after Potter when the night became cold and house-elves came out to cluck at him about the wetness. Draco permitted them to herd him in and get him a mug of warm chocolate, and didn’t think about Potter again until he was sitting before his fire.

Draco found Potter confusing. Either he should act like the noble Gryffindor Draco remembered or the civilized person he had seemed to be a few times. The constant wariness and the way he flickered back and forth between moods didn’t add up to any consistent pattern Draco was aware of.

But one thing was certain. Draco hadn’t behaved the way he should have to a guest _or_ part of his family over dinner tonight, when he had mentioned the Mudblood insult. He would have to make up for that. He would have to be polite, inquiring, solicitous.

And from what he had seen tonight, doing so would irritate Potter even more.

Draco smiled and finished his drink. He loved it when his will and manners ran side by side.


	7. Flesh to Flesh

“How was breakfast?”

Harry rolled his eyes, but didn’t otherwise respond to Ginny’s inquiry. She knew how he felt about this marriage, and he knew how she felt, and it wasn’t worth arguing about. The best thing they could do was find a magical way to break the bond as soon as possible, so that Harry could escape and marry her. “You said that you’d need to explain this first magical solution again,” he said, and sat down across from Ginny at the table in the Leaky Cauldron. As long as they didn’t meet there, or meet every day, it was a spot they could use sometimes. Harry was glad; he was starving for one of the Leaky’s bowls of thick soup after a boring morning filing reports. “Is Hermione coming to join us?”

Ginny, pausing with her hand hovering above the table as she stared at him, didn’t respond, but Hermione stepped up to him a moment later and kissed him on the cheek. “Right here,” she said. Harry noticed that she studied the ring on his left hand but made no motion to touch it.

“Harry,” Ginny said.

Harry glanced at her. She still hadn’t sat down. She had on a brilliant green robe today, he noticed wistfully, and it made her brown eyes glow, sparking hazel lights from their depths. Her hair shone more like fire than ever.

“Yeah?” he asked. Hermione, he saw, had already settled in her seat at the right side of their table and was waving down a server to take their order. Whatever had made Ginny hesitate, she either didn’t know about it or wasn’t letting it affect her.

“I asked because I wanted to _know_ how your breakfast went,” Ginny said, and her voice had gone cold and soft. “If you can’t speak about it, then—then that’s fine, but you owe me the courtesy of an answer.”

Harry stared at her, then sighed and drew back the hand he’d casually stretched out for her. He was trying not to touch her as much. She didn’t seem to like it, and it would feed the rumors about him cheating on her with Malfoy, or cheating on Malfoy with her; Harry never knew what the papers, still in an uproar about the mere _existence_ of the marriage, would choose to say next. 

Besides, he had to cope with the revelation Malfoy had forced on him a few nights ago, that he might think of Ginny as solely the mother of his children, the way that pure-bloods usually thought about their families. He—wasn’t quite ready to face that again.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d know. The same thing as ever. Mrs. Malfoy talking to me, trying to convince me that suddenly being adopted into the Malfoys is a _great_ thing. Malfoy wandering through and annoying the piss out of me. House-elves who need the benefit of your expertise, Hermione.” Hermione smiled at him briefly. Harry cocked his head. “Malfoy coming is a bit unusual, I have to admit,” he added a minute later. “The bastard usually takes his breakfasts in bed. Too posh to sit down on a chair like the rest of us.”

“It probably hurts the stick up his arse,” Ginny said lightly, and finally sat down. Harry smiled at her with relief that felt like cool water lapping him. Malfoy was wrong, he reassured himself. He didn’t think of Ginny as any way but the traditional, romantic one. He wanted to marry her and spend the rest of his life with her, grow old watching the lines appear around her eyes and getting familiar with every note of her laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “The sooner I can get out of that atmosphere, the better.” He turned to Hermione as the server put her glass of lemonade on the table and looked expectantly at him and Ginny. He was good. He _almost_ didn’t let his eyes flicker to the faded scar on Harry’s forehead. “Um, pumpkin juice, and whatever the soup of the day is.”

“Lemonade for me,” Ginny said. “Nothing to eat, thank you.”

Harry turned to look at her. It wasn’t often that she skipped lunch. Ginny gave him a hard smile and folded her hands on the table. “Nothing personal, but talking about the Malfoys turns my stomach,” she said.

Harry nodded. He could hardly expect her to be happy about it. He looked at Hermione again, who was in the middle of a sip. She held up one finger, then put the glass down and looked him dead in the eye. Harry fought to keep from squirming. Hermione had come out of the war with boundless enthusiasm for her chosen task of reforming those parts of the Ministry that dealt with magical creatures. Then she’d seen what she had to deal with and stared for a little while before she buckled down and got to work. She was as good a friend as she’d ever been, but dealing with her _intensity_ was sometimes a bit hard.

He could carefully ignore the other reason she peered intensely at him, if he tried.

“How much do you know about this marriage bond so far?” Hermione asked.

Harry chewed his lip. This wasn’t Hogwarts, and Hermione no longer insisted on hearing how much progress he’d made on his homework before she helped him with it. Well, there must be some other reason for her to ask the question, then. Harry shrugged. “Not much. They took my vaults, my name, my ability to live on my own. The bond will hurt us if we hurt each other, or if we spend too much time apart. Malfoy reckons that sleeping in the same house is enough to satisfy it, and that seems to have worked so far. The rings won’t let anyone else touch them, but otherwise, I’ve had no trouble shaking hands or hugging anyone or tackling that one suspect the other day to the ground. Malfoy claims that the Malfoy magic really recognizes me as part of the family, including the wards.” He thought about mentioning the statues; he knew Hermione would be fascinated and Ginny contemptuous in just the right way. But that felt weird and private somehow, and his stomach squirmed away from trying it. “That’s about it.”

Hermione nodded. “Yeah, I thought that would be,” she said. “The reason the magical solutions are so hard to make work, and for that matter, so are the legal solutions—I’ll need to explain some more about the nature of the marriage bond.”

Harry thought about complaining that he was eating lunch, but his joke to Malfoy about dry heaves the other night had been just a joke. Most of the time. When the server brought his soup, he nodded and took one sip. “Okay.”

“The marriage bond is meant to join one person to a more powerful pure-blood family,” Hermione said. “Vaults and names are assigned to whoever’s the most powerful.” She sneered a bit. “I’ve read a lot of books that assume that the woman is always pulled into the man’s family, but they can only come to that conclusion by ignoring all those cases where the woman’s family was more powerful and they took _him_.”

Harry paused. “Would it matter—” He caught Hermione’s glare and swallowed before he continued. “Would it matter which family initiated the bond? Like, if Lucius had tried this and my family was more powerful, would Malfoy have ended up with the name Potter?”

Hermione smirked. “Yes. That’s exactly what would have happened.”

Harry thought about it wistfully for a moment, then shook his head. “Wasn’t Lucius taking a risk?”

“Not if he knew the history.” Hermione sighed and placed her palms flat on the table. She looked as though she was trying to smooth wrinkles out of an expensive robe, Harry thought. He wondered what was wrong. “But there’s more. When the marriage bond—settles itself, then it can curl more deeply into those people it affects than simply taking away the vault and the name of the partner from the less powerful family.”

Harry ate some more soup before he responded, because he honestly needed the moment to keep from springing up and pacing back and forth. “So you’re saying that I could start obeying the Malfoys, or needing to spend more time around Malfoy.” He thought about pushing the bowl away, but he was too hungry to let the food go to waste. He would just do his best not to think about what he was hearing.

“No,” Hermione said. “Not unless you were someone who had always wanted Malfoy’s friendship and attention.”

Harry thought his shudder was enough to convey his answer to that. Ginny snickered.

“No, I know you’re not.” Hermione’s voice softened, and this time she took his hand that wasn’t holding the spoon. “But you’re—Harry, don’t take this the wrong way. You’ve always wanted a family. It’s completely understandable,” she added hastily, as though she assumed Harry would take the words as an insult. “It makes you vulnerable, though. If someone offered you a home and family with a price tag attached, would you have the strength to resist?”

“That’s exactly what Lucius has done,” Harry said. “And I think I’m resisting rather nicely, thank you.” He looked across the table at Ginny. She gave a faint smile and nodded. Harry wondered what that meant.

“The problem is that it could involve more than that,” Hermione murmured. “The marriage bond will sense those needs and fasten on them. It changes itself in response to strong needs and desires from the partners, you see. It could bind you faster to the family because it’s a place where you could belong.”

“You saw the Manor, at least once,” Harry said. All the color left Hermione’s face, and he winced, hating to have reminded her of the time she was there and tortured by Bellatrix. But he pushed doggedly on, since he’d already said it. “You—know what it’s like. There’s no way I could fit in there, Hermione, not for all the marriage bonds in the world.”

“But you might start feeling more comfortable there,” Hermione said. “The bond might even modify the way Malfoy behaves towards you—it couldn’t do anything about his parents, though—to make sure that he welcomes you.”

“What, like mind control? Imperius?” Harry shook his head and ate some more soup. “I have to assume that his parents would notice that happening to the poor bastard and help him. No one deserves that.”

“If they _approve_ ,” Hermione said, “then they might not. And you told us that Lucius forced this bond in the first place and that his mother has been doing her level best to invite you into the family.”

Harry closed his eyes, and the soup he had eaten so far curdled in his stomach. Suddenly, Narcissa’s soft conversation and the way she kept asking him if there was anything she could doe for him so that he would feel more at home in the Manor changed shape and proportion and angle in his head, like knives planted in flesh. 

No, he didn’t necessarily think that she knew about the marriage bond and had been trying to get him to stay there whether he wanted to or not. The problem was, it didn’t _matter_. Whether she knew or not, the end result could be the same if he listened to her or to the needy, orphaned part of himself and gave in.

_I can’t give in._

But the bond might affect his emotions, too, Hermione said. Harry opened his eyes and turned to Ginny, the one whom he could trust, the one who knew him best. She had already seen slight changes in his behavior, he thought, like agreeing to eat meals with Narcissa when he didn’t have to, and that meant she was the best person to let him know when things changed even more. She met his gaze, eyes wide.

“Let me know if I’m not acting like myself,” he said hurriedly. “Can you do that? No matter how much I might protest or talk about the need to go to the Manor? Just keep repeating it. Write me owls if necessary. I need to hear whatever you can tell me.”

Ginny nodded. Her eyes were larger than ever now, but a minute later she smiled. “I’d consider it a pleasure, an honor,” she whispered, and held his hand.

“Harry,” Hermione said, voice thick with disapproval, for some reason, even though she had been the one who’d brought this up. “That news wasn’t meant to make you even more paranoid, just to show you what we’re up against with this marriage bond and why there’s no simple solution.”

“I don’t care,” Harry said. He could feel a familiar emotion running through his veins, flashing like quicksilver. The moment when it had last come to a head for him was obscure in his memory, overridden with darkness and lightning and the sound of what had held him prisoner dying. He clasped his hands tightly together in his lap and closed his eyes, breathing in such a way that he hoped he could control it. “I don’t _care,_ Hermione. I was finally getting back on track, living the life I want to. You—have to see why this affects me so much.”

“Calm down, Harry,” she whispered. “Yes, I do, but you need to make sure that you don’t make the Leaky cease to exist or something.”

It was no exaggeration, Harry knew, not when he felt like this. It helped when Ginny put a steadying hand on his shoulder. He breathed, and the tumult slowly retreated, as did the danger that he would simply lash out with his magic because he had no choice. When he thought he could, he opened his eyes and nodded to Hermione.

“So the solution to the bond,” Hermione went on as though she had never stopped speaking, “is to change the focus of your needs and desires so the bond can’t prey on them. Think about things you want besides a family. Think about them as much as possible. Find new hobbies.” She caught his eye, and too late, Harry saw the steely gleam behind hers. “Get some _help_ with the problems that might make you most vulnerable.”

“Not when it would mean telling someone that their precious hero was really missing for three months,” Harry hissed back.

“You have to deal with this,” Hermione said. She had leaned back in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t have to do it that way, but Harry, it’s destroying you. Pulling you apart from the inside.” She paused, studying him, then continued in a voice deep with compassion and grief. “I understand why you wanted to wait, but it’s been three months now, as long as you spent—there, and things aren’t getting any better. Please, Harry, get some help.”

Harry shook his head. “You know about it,” he said, turning to include Ginny in his glance as well. “It’s not something I can tell anyone else about. They’d insist on—talking about things that I can’t talk about.”

“Other things,” Hermione said.

“Yes. Other things.” Their gazes crossed like swords. Harry shoved his chair back from his table, honestly no longer hungry now. Hermione and Ron and Ginny knew about the “other things” that Harry mean, but Harry had told them about it once, just like he’d told them about the source of the scars on his back once, and that was enough. He was never going to live through it awake again, not when he did so constantly in his dreams. “I’ll see what I can do about hobbies and focusing on other things than a family. Thanks for telling me, Hermione.” 

“Wait, Harry,” Ginny said softly, coming to her feet behind him. “Can I help?”

Harry turned to give her a strained smile. “Yeah. Didn’t Charlie have an instrument of some kind? A harp or something that he didn’t want to play anymore?”

“Mandolin,” Ginny murmured, watching him with even more sadness in her eyes, and pity. The pity was all right; she was one of the three people in the world Harry would have accepted it from. “I can send it over, if you’d like.”

Harry grimaced when he remembered that she would have to send it to the Manor instead of his home, but nodded. “That’d be great, thanks.” He set his face to the door of the Leaky Cauldron and hoped that no one from the papers was lurking right outside the door. He could put up with articles that speculated gleefully about him fleeing from Ginny, the same way he could put up with articles about everything, but he’d prefer not to, right now.

“I’ll send over the instructions for the incantation you’ll need to use after you’ve thought about other things for a month,” Hermione called after him.

Harry nodded once and then escaped. It was raining a bit outside, which was perfectly fine with him. Sometimes he and the weather were in agreement, and Harry could use that after the day he’d had.

*

Draco stepped out of the Muggle building and stood for a moment in the middle of the London street, his head half-turned. There were people all around him, of course, bustling and swaggering and striding past him, and they gave him annoyed glances that usually turned fascinated when they saw his robes. But that wasn’t Draco’s problem, nor what had caught his attention.

Someone was following him.

Draco was impressed with himself for having caught that particular fact in the middle of this crowd. He turned his head, shrugged a bit as though he had forgotten something and decided not to go back for it, and began to walk. His feet whispered across the ground. His robes swished. He hummed under his breath. All in all, he tried to present the ideal of a target who could be taken off-guard. The person could be a Muggle business rival.

Not even a wizard, he thought, would notice the careful position of his hand on his wand beneath the right side of his robe.

He moved on, his head bowed, awaiting the moment of the attack. He didn’t think the follower would wait long enough for him to get behind protections. Of course, perhaps they simply wanted to mark where he vanished so that they could come back and try later, but Draco didn’t think so. Whatever he had caught, whatever clue had alerted him to the presence of the follower in the first place, there was a suppressed urgency to it that hinted at a quick resolution to this, one way or the other.

He headed towards the Leaky, deciding that he would walk into Diagon Alley as if everything looked normal and see whether the sense of this stalker vanished or not. If it came with him, at least he could say for certain that the person was a wizard.

The Leaky Cauldron didn’t look busy, and Draco reached out to put a hand on the pub door so that he could open it. As he did so, two things happened at once. The door burst open, and Potter came through. He stumbled to a halt, turning his face up to the rain, his expression freezing as he saw Draco.

Second, the footsteps behind Draco accelerated.

Draco ignored the shock of seeing Potter here for now and spun around, his hand falling to his wand. The figure running towards him had a drawn wand already, and a slight blur around his movements indicated that he was using a charm to make the Muggles ignore him. Draco watched the precise way the man’s wand swept through the air, saw the grey hair at his temples, and suspected that he was not going to be able to get out of the way in time.

The curse that sprouted from his wand was tangled, twisting, green, with slimy grey patches here and there, like a vine that had rotted. Draco didn’t recognize it, and that made his heart bang with equal parts fear and anger. He didn’t know who would be sending an assassin after him, but someone who was pure-blood might at least have the good taste to choose a curse he could counter.

An arm looped around his waist, dragging him backwards. Potter whirled him, putting his back to the curse and his body between Draco and the magic. He shoved Draco to his knees with a harsh grunt, and then flung a Shield Charm up and around both of them.

Draco turned his head and saw the wizard chanting, although the shield was thick enough that Draco could only watch his lips moving, not hear the incantations or have a hope of replying for himself. Potter countered with spells that sliced the green vines in half, cut the ground apart and uprooted them when the strange wizard tried to make something grow there, and withered the leaves that were twisting over the wizard’s head and down the sides of his neck. He did so without effort, a grim smile showing on the half of his face that was visible to Draco.

He had been wrong about the Shield Charm, in fact. Potter had cast it only around Draco, and left himself outside it. Draco reckoned that made sense somewhere in his Auror brain—protect the innocent, fight the Dark wizards with his training—but it annoyed Draco. He wasn’t the helpless animals and maidens that Potter’s experience likely ran to him protecting too often.

Potter turned with the flow of battle, and Draco could see his back.

He stared. The grey scars he had seen before were there, but they had broken open and were oozing a thick, slimy sap. The sap trickled slowly over Potter’s muscles, and left more marks. It must have been agonizing, Draco thought, to have that eating away at your flesh, but Potter showed no sign that he noticed it.

The grunt he had heard Potter give when he forced Draco down took on another significance. Draco had thought he’d made it simply from the effort of manhandling Draco, but it made all too much sense that he’d taken the curse the attacker had cast in the back instead. And of course, Apparating away would take more self-protective instinct than he had.

Draco lunged to his feet and pounded on the Shield Charm. Potter didn’t look at him. He pressed the wizard in front of him harder instead, and the wizard finally broke, whirled around, and fled. Potter snarled triumphantly and took a step after him.

“Potter!” Draco screamed.

Potter turned around. He stared at Draco for a moment, then reached back and seemed to feel the sap coursing down between his shoulder blades.

His face underwent a terrible convulsion: muscles twitching, turning red, then turning white, while a bit of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. Then he shook his head, dissipated the Shield Charm with a flick of his wand, reached out, and gathered Draco in his arms.

“I’ll take you to the Manor,” he said. “Get you behind the wards. No one should hurt you then.” His words were racing, in contrast—Draco wondered if it was deliberate contrast—to the slow flood that the curse had turned his blood into.

Draco closed his hands firmly around Potter’s arms. “You need to get behind the wards, too,” he snapped, feeling the comforting tingle where their rings touched. “So that we can treat whatever—”

“ _No_.” Potter spoke the word as though it had the power to bring silence down on earth forever. “I have to get somewhere away from you where I can—repair this.” He closed his eyes, and Draco felt them start to Apparate.

He broke free enough to shatter Potter’s focus, and repeated, as Potter’s eyes flew open again, “What do you mean? What do you need?”

“I’ll _destroy you_ if you’re not behind wards!” Potter snarled, and then he grabbed Draco and Apparated again.

As they flew through the darkness, the only thing Draco could think was that the words were not a threat. 

They were a warning.


	8. Linked and Locked

Harry landed with a bump, barely feeling the wards part and shimmer around him, barely realizing that he had Apparated onto the doorstep of the Manor instead of inside the house where he had wanted to be. Maybe the wards were too strong for that. Maybe they didn’t yet permit him access, because he wasn’t a Malfoy in blood, whatever else he was.

It didn’t _matter_ , not when he could feel the anger and the dread singing through his veins, not when his blurred memories had begun to rotate through his head like clouds around the center of a storm. He didn’t know exactly _how_ he had escaped, but he knew _what_ had happened.

It couldn’t happen to Malfoy. It couldn’t happen to any living person. 

Harry kicked the door in, sending a small house-elf who had been about to open it reeling. He wanted to gasp out an apology as he dragged Malfoy past and looked around frantically for the first warded room, but he wasn’t sure he had. He wasn’t sure of anything at the moment, except the sliding liquid on his back and what it would mean for Malfoy if Harry couldn’t get away from him in time.

Abruptly, he wanted to laugh. What the fuck was _he_ still doing here? He didn’t have to find a room in the Manor where Malfoy would be safe from him. He just needed to leave Malfoy here and then Apparate. He leaned Malfoy on the wall and whirled away, estimating the distance to the door.

Malfoy turned his hand and tangled his ring with Harry’s ring.

Harry felt the same tingling paralysis race up his arm, holding him in place. He swore and kicked, and Malfoy turned his body slightly to the side so the kick couldn’t connect with his shin the way Harry had meant it to. Malfoy was panting, his face flushed, his eyes bright, and he shook his head when Harry glared at him as though Harry had spoken.

“Whatever this is, we’ll face it together,” he said. “Family doesn’t leave family alone when they’re hurt.”

“It isn’t what you think it is,” Harry said, trying to grasp reason as it slipped away from him, “and I’m not your fucking _family._ ” He lashed out again, and again Malfoy dodged. Harry started to lift his wand.

Malfoy looked at him with fearless eyes. “You have no idea what the bond will do to you, if you attack me,” he murmured.

As it happened, Harry wasn’t terribly afraid of what the bond could do. He had lived through hell on earth, and it took too much to make him afraid anymore, more than one marriage bond could manage. 

But on the other hand, if he was out of his mind with pain, he might be too out of his mind to hold back. He closed his eyes and swallowed, feeling cold sweat break out on his throat, trying to calm his trembling muscles by lowering his wand to his side. “Malfoy, please let me go,” he said softly. “You have no idea what you’re fucking with.”

“I want to understand,” Malfoy said, and heaved his arm back in a complicated motion. Somehow, startled and stumbling, Harry found himself thrown into Malfoy’s embrace. Malfoy smiled and held him, not even commenting on the awkwardness that involved twisting their hands around to maintain both the hug and the linking of the rings. “I want to help you.” His hands slid down Harry’s shoulders and towards the wounds. “Let me—”

The memories came closer to the surface, and Harry burned with fear. He was certain that he couldn’t let Malfoy touch the wounds. He didn’t know _exactly_ what would happen if Malfoy did, but he knew enough.

He tucked his wand in close to his body and cast the one spell that might help, on himself. His body glowed, and a Shield Charm abruptly formed around him, so close to him that nothing but that skin and a bit of air was included inside it. The magic sliced between their rings, pushing their hands apart. Malfoy swore in shock.

Harry rolled to the ground, strengthening the Shield Charm again and again with steady bursts of magic. Then he cast a Disillusionment Charm, also hovering above his skin. He didn’t have time to get into privacy as he’d been aiming for, but at least this way, Malfoy might not see what happened.

Then Harry wrapped his arm around his head and closed his eyes. 

The darkness burst over and through him.

*

Draco wrung his hand, angry when he noticed small drops of blood beading beneath the ring’s twisted metal. He was going to have _words_ with Potter about injuring him, if the magic of the bond didn’t get him first.

Then he stared at Potter on the floor, and realized that Potter might have other things to worry about right now than a potentially pissed-off marriage bond.

Potter was wrapped in a shimmering combination of spells, the Shield Charm that had appeared first, like a body-suit, and then a heat haze inside of it. Draco couldn’t be sure without hearing the incantation, but he thought that was Disillusionment, warped by the appearance of the _Protego_ on top of it. He knelt down next to the idiot and reached out gingerly to touch him.

His fingers collided with the shield and bounced away. A warning zip rang up his arm, rather like what he felt when their rings collided. Draco shook his head. He’d never heard of magic like this, but trust Potter to have mastered it.

He wondered for a moment if Potter had really done all that just to escape the way that Draco had tried to hold him with the rings, but then he—

He didn’t have words for everything he saw next, but the viscous ooze that he watched make its way over and around Potter, the flowing darkness, and the muffled screams he heard a moment later were descriptive enough.

Draco crouched there, unable to decide what else to do. It wasn’t as though he could abandon Potter. No matter what the man thought, he _was_ part of the family, enough to matter in some ways. (Though not in others. Draco had just sent an owl with courting information to Astoria yesterday, after all, including discussing the meal they should have the night of the wedding. It wasn’t as though the marriage was real. Just that some things about it were).

But Potter had just saved his life. Potter had put up with it better than Draco had thought he would, even with all his complaining so far.

Potter’s statue stood in the rockery, signs that the magic and the Manor had accepted him.

Draco stayed, and when a house-elf came up to him and looked as if it would run off squeaking in terror, he ordered it rudely away.

*

Harry was in the darkness. The darkness that had seized him as he was stepping out of the Ministry one night, swept him up in talons, and bore him off to a place that he still couldn’t locate now, because he had Apparated blindly from it and then scrubbed every trace of it from him in the shower as soon as he could.

He hadn’t seen the sun for three months.

The darkness came back and curled around him, and feasted on him. Harry laughed in the midst of his tears, in the face of the sanity and the madness combined that whispered to him with twin voices. What else would it do? He had understood, later, that the ones who had kidnapped him had rarely visited. They had left only one guard.

And the guard had been killed early in the process. Which only left Harry, and one other.

His memories boiled against the sides of his skull. Harry felt the hum of his magic against his skin, and knew that it was after the memories, that he had escaped and had the ability to use his wand again. He hadn’t had his wand then, and for long months, his power had meant nothing. He was free now. He was safe.

He laughed again at the thought of that word. _Safe,_ when the darkness still crouched inside his head, ready to be released again by a lack of light, by a careless touch or word, by his thoughts that would always stray in that direction whether he wanted them to or not.

By a touch to the wounds on his back.

The memories danced furiously then, and he really thought he would release them, that the Shield Charm he had raised wasn’t going to work. But no, it did. Because it had to. Because if someone else saw what had happened to him, and if Harry hurt anyone else, then he would have no choice but to—

_To do what I should have done when I understood what was happening and what I did to escape._

No. Hermione would be angry with him. Other people would be disappointed. He would never get to enjoy his life, his real life with Ginny and the children he wanted to have and the rest of the Weasleys, if he killed himself. 

That thought made the memories stop dancing, a sharp reminder of the difference between what and where he had been. Harry swallowed back the burning in his throat and slowly uncurled himself. The charms moved with him, still covering him, and Harry nodded in relief. The only thing that could stand up to his own magic was his own magic. He hadn’t unleashed his power on the Manor, though. That was good.

He banished the Disillusionment Charm and stretched with a small hiss. Yes, he could feel the slick movement on his back. It was still there. Well, of course. He would have to deal with that. But the danger hadn’t been the physical damage nearly as much as the magical damage that he knew would follow once he lost control of his mind. His magic had contained his immediate reaction, the trauma that was an inevitable flashback, and so he was all right now.

He _would_ be all right, he had to revise that opinion, once he got some time to himself and the opportunity to heal the wounds.

Harry rolled over, and froze when he realized that Malfoy was crouched beside him, staring at him. Harry had expected him to walk away the moment he realized he was still safe and that something was happening to Harry that he couldn’t see through the Disillusionment Charm. He couldn’t spy on Harry, he couldn’t have blackmail material to hold over his head, and watching Harry writhe on the floor couldn’t interest him. Why wouldn’t he walk away?

Except that he was here. His prurient curiosity must be stronger than Harry had expected. Harry renewed the glamours on his back first of all, easy enough since his wand was inside the Shield Charm with him, and then sat up, removing the _Protego._ He had several ways to play this. He’d have to see which one worked best.

“What was that?” Malfoy’s voice held the same flat tone Harry had heard him use when he was tutoring Crabbe and Goyle in Potions. He sat with his hands resting on his knees, his gaze unwavering.

 _A demand for honesty, it seems._ Well, there were lots of things Harry could do with that, still. He shrugged, and then hissed as the reopened wounds on his back pulled tight. “Nothing that need concern you. I recognized the magic that wizard was using, although not the man himself. He was coming after you because that stupid lie we spread for the public made him believe that I’d grieve if you died. We’ll take precautions, and it shouldn’t be dangerous for you after this. But I’d stay home for a couple of days.”

Malfoy scrambled up as Harry stood, his face pale. _Not an unusual reaction when he could have died,_ Harry thought. The man had probably wanted to kill Malfoy in front of Harry, or he would have struck before that. Harry reached out and put his hand gently on Malfoy’s shoulder, rubbing for a moment. It was a tactic he used a lot with victims who had barely escaped a Dark wizard.

“I didn’t mean that,” Malfoy said, voice lower now than it had been, and ugly. “I didn’t recognize the magic that man used, either, and I’d like to, but I meant what came after. Why did you cast those charms on yourself? Why did you say that I would be harmed unless you could get me behind wards in time?”

Harry felt his slowly forming smile freeze. He didn’t shrug, because it would have hurt too much, but he tilted his head to the side and feigned confusion. “What? Oh, I was overreacting. As you see, a Shield Charm took care of the problem. I shouldn’t have frightened you with all that talk about wards. I’m sorry.”

Malfoy surged forwards. His fingers dug into Harry’s arm like claws, and once again he twisted his hand, trying to connect the rings. Harry expertly drew his left hand back, another Auror move, and cradled it against his chest. Malfoy panted at him, and then he reached out. Harry ducked, expecting a punch.

He didn’t expect Malfoy to grab him by the shoulders and literally shake him until his teeth rattled, no doubt fulfilling one of Hermione’s fantasies.

“You idiot,” Malfoy hissed at him as Harry came slowly out of the daze and the ringing in his ears that the shaking had caused. “You were hurt—badly hurt. And you had some sort of magical reaction to that. Did you think that you could keep it a secret forever? Did you think that we wouldn’t find out?” He sounded personally offended now, which made no sense to Harry. They _hadn’t_ agreed to share every detail of their personal lives, only the ones that seemed likely to make a difference in forming or opposing the marriage bond. 

_Why does he care if I live or die? In fact, it would probably be easier for him if I died, because then he’d be free of the bond, no questions asked._

“I kept what I needed to a secret,” Harry said, and straightened his shoulders so that he could throw Malfoy’s hands off. “I’ve dealt with magic like that before, I said. I know that it’s not going to hurt me. It looks much worse than it was.”

Malfoy stared at him with lips slightly parted. Harry looked back, calm and insolent, letting his hands rest on his wand and his chest. Malfoy couldn’t do anything to force him to reveal these secrets, not when Harry had kept some details even from his best friends. And Malfoy was far from a best friend.

*

Draco wanted to shake Potter again. He wanted to scream at him. He wanted to knock him unconscious with a Sleeping Charm and call a Healer to tend him.

He wanted to do a great many things that were not logical or necessary for a Malfoy to do. He settled for closing his eyes, pinching his nose, and counting to ten under his breath. Then twenty. In French.

He heard the rapid click of footsteps before he could finish, and looked up to see Potter walking towards the grand staircase.

“ _Idiot_.” Draco sprinted after him. “Do you know what those steps will do to your back, the condition it’s in?”

Potter glanced back at him mockingly. “What condition?”

Draco caught a glimpse of his back, and hesitated. Potter looked as if he had grown new skin. Perhaps the green magic the wizard had been using was a kind that Potter knew how to counter and heal. He had said that he recognized it, after all.

Then Draco told himself not to be a fool, especially because he recognized the small shimmer characteristic of glamours.

He looked back into Potter’s eyes and slowly shook his head. “You’re such an idiot that I don’t even know what to say to you,” he murmured.

“Good. Don’t say anything, then.” Potter dug his hand into the banister and swayed a bit. Draco realized abruptly how much effort it was taking him simply to keep upright. “I know what organization the man who attacked you is from. I’ll alert the Ministry, and they can take care of it.”

“Tell me,” Draco demanded. “Where he was from. What magic he was using. You owe me that much, at least.”

Potter’s eyes shone with sudden and glorious heat. Suicidal heat, Draco thought, remembering the grey ooze that had coated Potter’s back. “No, I don’t,” Potter said, voice snapping like frost. “And you know _why_ I don’t?”

Draco shook his head, hypnotized by those eyes.

“Because you owe me a life-debt now,” Potter said. “And I’m claiming it. My price is that you don’t ask anything about today. I told you, the Ministry will take care of it. It’s a group that they didn’t think was active anymore, but when they hear about this threat, they can send a few well-prepared Aurors to take them down. Not something that _you_ need to be involved in.” He flickered his eyes over Draco as though he was able to see every spell he could cast and the relative strength with which he could cast it in that one glance.

Draco clapped his teeth together, then let his lips part in a grim smile. “You didn’t notice the difference in the rings, then, Potter?” he asked sweetly.

“No, the way they bloody keep me from doing what I need to felt the same to me,” Potter said, and smiled back.

Draco turned his ring over for answer. Potter stared at it, and then came to attention despite himself. Draco nodded. “You note the thread of platinum, now,” he said. “It was gold and silver and copper, nothing else. Now it isn’t.”

“And what does platinum mean?” Potter’s voice was savage and strange.

“That someone saved someone else’s life,” Draco said. “That we’re bound together in other ways, now, since the binding that we had before wasn’t _enough._ The marriage bond can change. It can pull us closer together. In fact, it was designed to do that. And now you’ve ensured that it’ll happen.” He shook his head, honestly awed by the thought of how much Potter had changed things, and ultimately for the worse, in about half an hour. “You have a gift for trouble, don’t you, Potter?”

“It won’t matter, if your father ends the bond,” Potter said, and he sounded as if he were pleading for that to be the truth far more than he was convinced of it. “It won’t matter what we do or—how the bond has changed. What will matter is that it’s over, and done with, and we can move on with our lives.”

Draco stepped up to him. Potter seemed to have forgotten about his intention to go upstairs, and stared at Draco with exhausted, ravaged eyes that Draco was relatively sure had no glamour on them. “Merlin,” he said softly, moving his hand over Potter’s face. “How badly do you need that to be true?”

“Pretty badly,” Potter admitted in a low voice, leaning into his touch for a few seconds. He straightened immediately afterwards, shaking his head, but Draco had seen what he had seen. Yes, the bond was bringing them closer together, manipulating Potter’s desire to save others and Draco’s desire to show him up and perhaps even the kindness and curiosity that Draco felt about his injuries now. “I won’t be trapped here forever, Malfoy. I’ll find some way out of this and to a life I always wanted.”

“There you go again.” Draco put a foot on the bottom stair. The conversation they were having seemed to have slowed Potter for the moment. Draco wanted to reach out and touch him again, but that could break the spell. He maintained his voice at a calm, rational flow instead. “Speaking of your future life as though it was a reward of some kind, a prize for you.”

“And haven’t I earned a prize?” Potter’s eyes shone at him with feverish intensity. “With the war and everything else that I’ve suffered?”

“Yes,” Draco said. “Perhaps you have.” Another step nearer, and he thought he could see the glamours on Potter’s skin beginning to fade, break apart. He tried to keep his eyes away from them, to avoid showing that he’d noticed them, instead focusing on Potter’s face. “But I don’t think you’d be willing to make yourself a prize at the expense of other people. Would you want Weasley to marry you merely because _you_ wanted her to? Would you want children simply because you want someone to love you? I don’t think that’s how you work. One of my friends, yes, I might believe that. Not you.”

“That’s not,” Potter said, and closed his eyes. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know. I need time alone to think about it. I promise, Malfoy, I’ll think. The platinum in the ring, and what you’re saying about Ginny, and all the rest. But I need to sleep.”

Draco watched the glamours vanish completely. The muscles in Potter’s back became seamed with grey, and then with green. One was the color of the scars that Draco had seen before, the other the color of the spells that had struck Potter when the wizard was hunting. The green slime had hardened and dried into what looked like a protective covering, but Draco doubted it was. And the scars looked horrendous, like trails that had been dug into Potter’s back by some burrowing insect. Draco didn’t want to meet what had caused them.

But he wanted to know what had. He shook his head. “You need help. A Healer.”

Potter jumped, and his eyes flared open. He pressed himself backwards, away from Draco’s reaching hand, shaking his head frantically. “No one can see this,” he said. “I don’t want anyone else hurt, and I don’t want them to take the story and spread it around and doubt the Ministry and make fun of me.” He turned away, taking a single lurching step upwards.

And fell. Draco watched as the grey scars broke open, flooding Potter’s back with red and with something thicker, darker. He dropped to one knee beside Potter this time, and took his wand away when he tried to raise it.

“ _Idiot_ ,” Draco said more forcefully. The ring on his finger jerked and buzzed, although it wasn’t touching Potter’s. The platinum strand glowed against his skin like fire. Draco reached out and drew him closer, calling sharply for house-elves, as he should have from the first. But he had wanted to coax and trick the answer out of Potter too much to call on them. Now answers would have to wait.

Juli, Potter’s elf, and several others Draco knew appeared. They started to wail when they saw the wounds on Potter, but Draco hissed commandingly at them, and they shut up. He sent them for bandages, a book of healing spells, a Healer, his mother, some of the potions that he kept in his bedroom, and cloths that he could use to keep the pressure on the wounds. A second thought, and he called back the one who had gone for the book of healing spells and commanded it to bring a book on the arts of decay, as well. It was his best guess for the kind of magic that had harmed Potter, based on the way it had looked and moved.

Potter was dazed, his eyes rolling back in his head, but he still fought and tried to shy away when Draco conjured a stretcher for him and lowered him onto it, making sure he arranged Potter on his stomach. “What? No. You can’t—” Magic ran, gleaming, along the edges of his arms, though Draco knew he didn’t have enough strength to use it against Draco.

At least, Draco sincerely hoped he didn’t.

“You have no choice,” Draco said. “You’re sick, and you need help.”

“But not _yours_ ,” Potter said through barely moving lips. “Please, Malfoy, go and get one of my friends.”

Draco shook his head. “Malfoys take care of their own,” he said, and began to guide the stretcher up the stairs.

“I’m not a Malfoy,” Potter whispered. “You don’t want me to be one. Why do you keep contradicting yourself all the time?”

Draco shrugged. “The marriage is real enough that I don’t want you to die,” he said. “And at the moment, you’re dangerously near that.”

It would serve as the truth, for a while.

Nevertheless, Draco was beyond glad when his mother joined him in his bedroom—it was the closest one, so he had taken Potter there—and began helping him do all they could when they didn’t know what they were dealing with. Family helped family, but Potter wasn’t the only one here who needed to be helped.


	9. In the Same Bed

“What happened to him?”

Draco could only shrug as he moved Potter carefully into his bed and cast preemptive cleaning charms on the sheets that would take care of any sap and blood running down from Potter’s scars which might stain them. The Healer had come and cleaned the wounds as best she could, in silent shock; she could only shrug when Draco asked what the long-term consequences would be. Draco had given her a bag of Galleons and _Obliviated_ her. “I don’t know. An assassin came after me, and when Potter saved my life, one of the curses struck him. Then, when we came home, he kept muttering about how he had to get me behind wards before he could hurt me. I wouldn’t go, and so he wrapped a Shield Charm around himself to hold—whatever it was—inside. Plus a Disillusionment Charm so that I couldn’t see what was happening,” he added, miffed now that he had a chance to think about it. Potter’s actions spoke his distrust more clearly than words, and no action more so than that one. “Then he tried to pretend nothing was wrong with glamours, and then he collapsed.”

“I see.” His mother bent over the bed and studied Potter’s back with care that made Draco want to advise her to lift her face. She wasn’t used to sights like this, smells like this. Draco wouldn’t have wanted Astoria around them.

“I have never seen anything that resembled it,” Narcissa murmured at last, taking a pace away from the bed and folding her hands behind her back. Draco watched her with admiration pulsing beneath his skin. So strong and so delicate at the same time, she was an example to him. And to Astoria, although it would probably be some time before Astoria could visit the Manor and take lessons from her. “The wounds stink of decay, but the original wounds—Draco, nothing should be able to cause scars like that.”

“I know,” Draco said shortly. He had helped the house-elves to bathe and dress Potter’s wounds before the Healer arrived, but the sap and the blood kept pushing out of them. The wounds were too deep, Draco thought, or the scars crisscrossed too much of his back, to be soothed by such simple methods. He picked up the Dark Arts book and flipped to the index, looking for any instances of “rot” or “decay.”

“You can stop now.”

Draco started and nearly dropped the book. Potter’s eyes were open despite what must have been agonizing pain in his back, and he had his head turned to the side, his cheek resting on the pillow as he fixed his eyes firmly on Draco’s face. He hadn’t yet tried to push himself up, but Draco thought that wasn’t long in coming. Potter’s eyes were on fire, and not with pain.

“Stop what?” Draco asked, because he didn’t think Potter _really_ wanted them to leave his wounds untreated.

“Stop pretending that you care about what happened to me.” Potter planted his hands beneath him, sure enough, and started to make himself rise. Narcissa moved forwards with a small distressed sound, and Potter snapped his head around. His expression faltered when he saw her.

“Harry,” she murmured. Draco hesitated when he saw how Potter looked away. Perhaps he should be using the git’s first name if he wanted his attention, and not the last one that didn’t properly belong to him anymore. “Please, let us help. You look as if you are dying, and contrary to what you imply, I do not like to see my son-in-law in pain.”

Potter narrowed his eyes. “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he agreed, with a mild tone in his voice that warned Draco about the extreme contrast that was coming, “if you actually had one.”

His mother let her head droop and her eyelids fall to shade her eyes. “Perhaps I deserve that,” she murmured. “But I think it is fair to ask if I _really_ do, if you are not throwing my concern back in my face simply because you are uncomfortable.”

“This isn’t—this isn’t something you need to worry about,” Potter muttered, with a late, awkward attempt at gallantry. Draco snorted, and Potter glared at him in turn, then returned a softened gaze to his mother. “Really. This is the worst attack, but I’ve been dealing with them for a number of months. I don’t want to stain your sheets or worry you.”

 _And that didn’t even sound sarcastic,_ Draco thought in amazement. For the first time, it crossed his mind that Potter was serious—not merely rejecting Malfoy care because he hated them or it wasn’t good enough for him, but pushing it away because he didn’t _want_ help. He wanted to keep this concealed and away from all eyes.

Of course, that only made Draco all the wilder to find out what had happened.

“I think it is,” Narcissa said, and her mouth had a gentle but firm set to it that Draco recognized from the days when he still did things like order the house-elves to perform impossible tasks and punish themselves when they couldn’t complete them. “When you could have destroyed my son, or at least so you claimed, it is important.”

Potter winced and tried to push himself up again. Draco held him in place with one hand on his shoulder, being careful not to touch the center of his back. Potter switched his glare to him. Draco only smiled faintly back.

“You saved my life,” he said. “There’s a platinum bond in the ring. Possibly it’ll be dissipated if you tell me the truth.” He looked at the scars again. They had stopped oozing, he thought, but they still looked exquisitely painful, nothing like the smooth marks on the skin that he had first seen when the marriage bond united them. “At the very least, we need your expertise to care for the wounds.”

“They’ll heal,” Potter said. He lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes for a moment. Draco wondered if he was counting under his breath the way that Draco sometimes did when he was irritated. “You can move me to my own bedroom and leave me alone. With a fire, please. They need heat and light.”

Draco noticed the catch in his voice on the last word, and wondered incredulously if Potter was afraid of the dark. But now wasn’t the time to tease him about it. He leaned down towards Potter’s ear and whispered instead, “Do you think we want the murder of Harry Potter on our consciences?”

“What consciences?” Potter muttered back, but the words Draco had uttered were the right ones, either because Draco had used his last name or because he seemed to be retreating to a purely pragmatic viewpoint. His tremors relaxed under Draco’s hand, and he sighed and lowered his head. “All right. I’ll tell you what I can.”

Narcissa caught Draco’s eye and shook her head, telling him without words to leave this up to her. Draco nodded and moved out of the way. Narcissa sat down in the chair beside Potter and took his hand between both of hers.

“You can tell us more than that,” she said softly. “We are here to help you, not to harm you.” And she said it so gracefully and perfectly and gravely that Draco wondered how in the world anyone could avoid believing her.

_Especially someone who I think now is starved of care and honesty—strange among all those Gryffindors, but there you are._

*

Harry felt the same weary frustration welling up in him that he felt whenever Hermione urged him to talk to some Mind-Healer about what he had been through. He could explain, yes, but they wouldn’t understand. On the surface, it was a simple story, not nearly as horrifying as it had been to live through. They would tell him to keep his courage up and look at him strangely when he couldn’t do it.

Then he relaxed. That was a disadvantage with his friends or with people his friends wanted to help him, but it might be an advantage with the Malfoys. They would see that their concern was misplaced and leave him alone after this.

“Fine,” he said. “Someone kidnapped me about six months ago. I never did get the name, but he was using the same kind of magic that the wizard attacked Malfoy here with.” He flicked his eyes at Malfoy without moving. He had to admit, at the moment it didn’t feel as though he could, at least not without melting some of his muscles. “He held me prisoner in a house for a few days. He took away my wand and kept me groggy with Stunners a lot, but he didn’t want me to spend all of my time unconscious.”

“Why not?” Malfoy interrupted. “You’re dangerous enough that he should have.”

Harry shrugged. “Another thing that I never really understood,” he lied. There were certain things he would _not_ explain. “Probably related to the reason he wanted me in the first place, whatever that was. Well, after three days I did manage to raise enough wandless magic to hurt him. In fact, I killed him. I’d just meant to throw him against the wall, but he hit his head, and his skull cracked.”

“You could have left then,” Narcissa murmured, sounding as if she were happy for him, rather than outraged about the murder. She had never stopped holding his hand, and her voice sounded like the cooing of doves. Harry reminded himself never to discuss anything serious with her at length. She’d probably be able to persuade him into agreeing with her against his better judgment.

“I tried to,” Harry said. The memories bubbled up in his head, sticky and much clearer than the moment of the escape. Of course, he hadn’t been running on adrenaline and horror and sheer determination to survive or die then. “The moment he died, all the lights went out, and I was alone in the darkness. All the doors locked and warded themselves. I think it was probably an attempt on his part to make sure that no one who killed him would escape easily.” Harry tried not to swallow, but he did anyway, and saw Malfoy’s keen eyes follow the motion. Harry glared at him, daring him to comment, and then continued. “And I found out _part_ of why he wanted me there, although not the whole thing.”

“There was someone else in the house?” Narcissa asked.

“Some _thing_.” Harry had to close his eyes then, and concentrate on controlling his breathing. He’d never got a good look at the thing, but he had felt it, oh yes. The suckers that ran across his back and dug into his muscles, the way they had dug deep and pulled at his memories, his soul, his magic. The coldness that whispered past his ear whenever its wings beat. How it had fastened on him and held him there, against the wall, for three months, pouring cool liquid down his throat whenever he began to die of thirst, forcing him to chew lumps of what might have been tasteless bread when he was hungry.

Held him there.

And ate him.

In the dark.

For three months.

He was breathing too fast, he realized abruptly. Malfoy had risen to his feet and put his hand on his wand as sparks of magic began to rise from Harry’s wrists and trail down to the sheets.

Harry closed his eyes and turned his head away. He wasn’t yet at the point in his tale when he’d start lashing out with his magic because that was what had happened in the memories, but he was raw and frightened enough to be dangerous. He swallowed noisily, not caring who saw this time, and shook his head. That was the part that he could never retell to anyone else, that he had only got across to his friends and Ginny by writing it down, after which his magic had sealed him in a room with lights burning high on the walls. A fire would have been too much of a temptation at that moment; he would have slept close enough to it to burn his clothes off. 

He always wanted to see what was coming for him, now. Now and for the rest of his life.

“What happened? Harry?”

That was Narcissa, and amazingly, she didn’t sound as though she was afraid. Harry didn’t understand. He huffed into the pillow and turned his head back. She sat there with one hand on his arm, rubbing gently. Harry tensed when it rose towards his shoulder, and of course she noticed and pulled back, rubbing his lower arm instead.

“The creature attacked me,” Harry said. He couldn’t say the word _ate_ , not aloud, for so many reasons. He felt a scream bubbling in his throat and clenched his jaw down. It was all right, he reassured himself several times. The Malfoys wouldn’t believe him, wouldn’t care. Or they would take their newfound comprehension and be satisfied with that. Malfoy had asked him the questions mainly out of curiosity, he knew. “It would keep coming back, and I never knew when it would strike again. I had enough food to survive the attacks for the three months it took them to find me, but it was unpleasant.”

There. Enough truth that even if they chased the hints and rumors that surrounded the scars on his back among the Aurors, they wouldn’t find anything different. Enough lies that he could preserve his dignity. He gave Narcissa a tentative smile, wondering if he would see contempt or confusion in her eyes for him not being able to get away fast enough.

He didn’t understand the emotions he saw at all. Her grip tightened on his hand until Harry winced, and then she backed off with a murmured apology and rose to her feet, staring at him. Harry blinked back. He wondered absently for a moment what he looked like, disheveled and dirty and blood-stained against the pristine sheets of her son’s bed.

“When you wish for my compassion, then I will give it,” Narcissa whispered to him. “You don’t look as though you want it right now.”

Harry blinked again. _Huh_. He wondered if it was more compassionate of her to have the insight and hold back, or to force it on him, the way that Hermione had had to force him to let her see the scars. “Well,” he said. “Um. Thanks, Mrs—” Too easy to understand the warning in her eyes this time, and he smiled. “Thanks, Narcissa.”

She bent down and kissed his forehead, then left the room. Harry watched her go in some concern. Her back was stiff enough to affect the usually graceful way she moved, and he didn’t know why. Had he disgusted her so much that she had to go away and recover herself? Maybe that was it.

“Potter.”

Oh, right, Malfoy was still here. Harry turned back to him and sighed. “I’ll be out of your bed in a minute, Malfoy,” he said. “I don’t think I can sit up right now, but the weakness only lasts a short time. I haven’t been exposed to the magic that that first Dark wizard used to capture me since that first time, and that’s what made the scars react so badly, I think. But they’ve stopped bleeding and dripping by now, haven’t they? They always do.”

Malfoy was watching him with an expression that was as incomprehensible as Narcissa’s. But he didn’t walk away, which made him a lot scarier. Harry tensed despite himself. Malfoy seemed to notice it, because he moved a step back and ran a hand through his hair. Harry stared. Maybe his bad habits were rubbing off on Malfoy. Narcissa wouldn’t like that. Harry was pretty sure she had raised her son to a higher standard.

“Are you insane?” Malfoy asked.

Harry blinked again. “No? And I think that’s a pretty impressive achievement, considering I spent three months in darkness with some kind of magical creature attacking me.” A defensive tone crept into his voice despite himself. He had hoped that telling Malfoy and his mother the truth would make them back off, but if they used it to make fun of him—

Malfoy sat down on the bed beside him and reached out to put a hand on his back. Harry twisted towards him, hissing, wand firmly in hand.

Malfoy pulled his hand away, but didn’t get off the bed, which was the other thing Harry was waiting for. Harry stayed still, eyes on him, wondering all the while what the _fuck_ he thought he was doing and what had happened to their agreement that they didn’t need to act like a married couple in private.

*

Draco could taste grit under his tongue as he stared at Potter. It was as if he had been, for a few faint moments, in the darkness with him, blazing with hope when his enemy died and then despair when he realized what else lived in the house with him.

How had Potter endured those three months without going insane? Draco knew he could not have. Light, air, safety, magic—he would need all those things to go on existing at a very basic level, and without them, he would have gone mad. 

But Potter hadn’t. He had endured, and he even seemed willing to pretend—and have Draco pretend, which was more irritating—that those three months in darkness were nothing, and that he hadn’t done anything remarkable.

_Was he like that in school?_

Draco shook his head. He no longer thought he could trust his perceptions of Potter from Hogwarts, because he _knew_ that the boy he’d thought he’d known could never have survived this. But he had, which meant that Draco might be wrong about other things.

It was bitter to have to admit wrongness on a topic he’d always been so sure of. But he didn’t have to say it aloud, which eased the sting. Draco leaned forwards and spoke quietly, because he had some hope that Potter would listen to him if he said it that way.

“Yes, it’s impressive. But I wasn’t actually talking about that. I was talking about the amount of lying that you did to cover up something like this. What did you think our reaction would be to a story like that? Did you think that we would spread it around, or laugh at you for it?”

Potter looked at him as if _he_ were the one with the excellent excuse for being mental. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Draco clenched his hands together in his lap. His rage that Potter could think so badly of him was fighting with the desire to hold down his emotions so that Potter wouldn’t retreat back into the hole that Draco and his mother had so recently pulled him out of. “We’re better than you think us,” he said. “We would never do that. Not to a family member.”

Potter rolled his eyes. “Fine. Then I have until your father dissolves the bond, and then you will. Excuse me if a stay of execution sounds little better than the real thing.”

Draco lunged forwards and grabbed Potter’s wand hand. Potter tried to yank it away again, his eyes bright as steel nails. Draco shook his head and held on. He _had_ to hold on. His heart was pounding wildly, and his breath came short and sharp and fast.

“What you endured,” he said, “is something no one should have to. For fuck’s sake, Potter, the Dark Lord was living in my house for almost a year. He tortured people in front of me. He made _me_ torture them. My aunt hurt my mother. Do you think we have anything but admiration and sympathy for people who undergo that kind of pain? I can assure you that we don’t.” He slid his fingers in between Potter’s softening ones; Potter had tried to make a fist, but the effort faded as he listened to Draco. “My father might feel differently, but even he saw us tormented and knew he could do nothing. This is—this is something to bind you closer to us, not to make us laugh at you.”

That made Potter tense again. “But we don’t want to be bound closer together,” he pointed out patiently, as though Draco had forgotten that. He looked down at the platinum strand in Draco’s ring. “We have to find some way out of this.”

Draco’s mouth felt full of grit again. He shook his head. “Not at the expense of this,” he said. “Not at the expense of hurting you.”

“I’m _already_ hurt. What’s a bit more pain?”

And it wasn’t said flippantly, Draco noted, it was said impatiently. As though Potter truly couldn’t comprehend that anyone would care about a bit more pain piled on top of what he already carried.

Shame, hot and unwelcome, flashed through Draco. He would never have thought Potter could bear something like this, he would never have thought that Potter didn’t want attention, and he would never have thought that Potter would consider his own pain unimportant. It hurt his pride, to be so mistaken about someone.

And it hurt his pride to let Potter go on being so mistaken about him. He locked his fingers in Potter’s again, twisting his hand so that their rings aimed towards each other when he tried to get away. Potter understood the silent message and stopped struggling, instead watching Draco with mistrustful eyes.

“I won’t hurt you like that,” Draco said. “Not now, not after the dissolution of the bond, not ever. For what you endured, for what you told me about, and because you saved my life when you had to be in intense pain. Twice, in fact. You saved me from that curse, and then you saved me when you wrapped the Shield Charm around yourself and kept your lashing out from hurting me or anyone else. Or even any of our property. I’m impressed,” he repeated, sliding his free hand down Potter’s arm to his elbow. “It’s something a Malfoy would do.”

Potter stared at him as if he was squinting into strong sunlight. “You’re wrong,” he said. “You have to be. Or the ring would show two platinum bands.”

“Each one appears after a shared event,” Draco said. “The magic obviously considers these things all part of the same event.” He reclined against the pillows, shifting as he did so that he could continue to hold Potter’s hand, but from a more comfortable angle. “And as for my opinion about the way you acted, no, I’m not wrong. I couldn’t ask for a higher standard of behavior from myself. In fact.” He paused, and swallowed. “I owe you an apology. You never even brought up that I was a torturer for the Dark Lord, but I forced you to relive your story.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Potter said quickly. His eyes were very wide, and he kept tugging at Draco’s hold on his hand with restless little jerks of his arm. They reminded Draco of automatic movements that he didn’t know he was doing. “I mean—you don’t. You don’t. It didn’t happen that way. It’s just your perception of things. I wasn’t _thinking_ about acting like a Malfoy. I didn’t _think_ about bringing up your past and then decide not to. It’s just things I did. I did them for different reasons than the ones you attribute to me.”

“I know,” Draco said softly. “But this is all just perception, isn’t it? The way we’re choosing to act around the marriage bond. Tell me, Potter—” And he was being ridiculous. His mother had made the transition before he had. Another thing to be ashamed of. Draco sighed and spoke around a burning in his throat that pierced him like a knife wound. “ _Harry._ Why is it that we never thought about acting civilly towards each other, or even politely? It would have made waiting for the marriage bond to wear off less painful.”

“I’ve—we were acting civil.”

Draco smiled a bit at the slip-up. “I’ve treated people who betrayed me better than you, who owed me nothing.” He touched Harry’s hair, his cheek beneath the wide eyes. “I still don’t _want_ to be married to you.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

Draco laughed a little. “But I do want to show you how impressive your achievements are to me, and to show you that the Malfoys can do something that’s equivalent. You shouldn’t be moved again as long as those wounds are open.” Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Draco shook his head and pressed on. “Stay here. Sleep, if you can. Rest. I’ll guard you from any return of that creature, and the lights will stay on.”

“I can’t _sleep_ in front of you,” Harry whispered. “I’ve always slept alone, since—that happened.”

“Relax, then, as much as you can,” Draco said, and lay down beside him, turning his head away so that Harry could have at least a modicum of privacy. He never let go of Harry’s hand, though.

He had fallen down badly. Harry Potter had shown himself as more gracious than the Malfoys today, more respectful of their property, more defensive of their lives. Draco was going to return that courtesy and consideration, to show that he could be polite to his spouse if he couldn’t do anything else.

“Consider it my reparation for what I said at the dinner table the other night,” he murmured, when Harry shifted restlessly beside him.

Amazingly, that caused Harry to quiet down. Draco closed his eyes with a chuckle he made sure to keep silent. _I reckon he considers Mudblood too violent an insult to let go._

*

It made no sense. Nothing made any sense.

But Harry had to confront some hard truths, especially given the exhaustion that seeped through his muscles. The curse that had hit him would have no permanent effects, he thought, but it had weakened him to be thrown back into those memories and then made to relive them aloud to the Malfoys. He wasn’t going anywhere right now.

He needed rest, and he’d taken it in worse circumstances. He’d managed to sleep in the dark with claws and suckers fastened on his shoulders for three months.

He closed his eyes. Malfoy stayed silent, the warmth beside Harry saying nothing, wanting nothing, undemanding. Even his hand was as cool and motionless as a statue’s in Harry’s hand.

Somehow, though Harry never quite knew when, he passed from half-tense relaxation to true sleep beside another person for the first time since he’d come back.

And there were no dreams.


	10. On the Same Pillow

Harry opened his eyes the next morning to realize that he’d fucked himself over but good.

He listened to Malfoy’s breathing beside him and counted the beats of his own heart. They were different. That was good, he reassured himself. It meant that he still had a bit of independence, that he hadn’t given in completely to Malfoy’s demands for…

For what?

That was the hell of it. He knew he had given up something important, something that he hadn’t let even his friends or Ginny have that much of, but he couldn’t define it.

As he lay there, though, silk beneath his skin, goose feathers or some other ridiculously soft and expensive thing behind his head, he found a name for it. 

Weakness.

He hadn’t told his friends all about his sojourn in the darkness because he needed them to see him as strong. They couldn’t know how close he had come to breaking. They would worry more about him than they already did, and Harry didn’t want that for them. They’d suffered, too, during those months he was missing, if not as badly as he had. For their sakes, he wanted them to move on with their lives instead of continually asking him whether his wounds hurt, whether his nightmares had stopped, whether his cracks ran too deep to be repaired.

Harry was starting to think that they did, but that wasn’t the _point_. The point was that he had reasons to keep his secrets, and he felt weak when he talked about them. Or worse than weak. The clogging-glass feeling in his throat, as if he tore himself apart by telling the truth, got worse every time he had to confess to something else, something new, a change that Hermione had noted in him, or Ron remarking that he wouldn’t sit with his back to doors anymore, or how Ginny had looked at him in shock and surprise when he snapped at her for touching his back.

He hadn’t told them about what he’d done to escape, either, but that was for a different reason. It disgusted him, it would surely disgust them, and he had enough trouble living with it, without _re_ living it.

He turned his head and looked at Malfoy. Malfoy was still relaxed, his mouth opening slightly with his sleep, although of course nothing as undignified as drool or an air bubble escaped. One of his hands curled beneath his head as though he wanted to defend it from invisible mice that would come out to gnaw his fingers during the night.

His other pointed towards Harry.

Harry nodded slowly. Malfoy hadn’t been worried about him during those missing months, because the marriage bond hadn’t existed then and he hadn’t known Harry was missing, thanks to the spread of the Ministry’s soothing lies. He wouldn’t worry himself to death about Harry now.

In a weird way, Harry could be more honest with him than with his friends, because it wouldn’t hurt either of them as much.

And Harry knew that things had changed enough now that he couldn’t go back to ignoring Malfoy and pretending nothing had happened. Malfoy _knew_. The knowledge would hide and glint in his eyes whenever he looked at Harry now, and as much as Harry disliked the notion, he at least owed it to Malfoy to nod back at that light.

Which was why he had fucked himself over, because he didn’t know what would happen to his shields against the memories once he let someone inside them. If Malfoy was nearby when Harry went through a memory-cycle again, he might get hurt.

“You worry too much, Harry.”

Malfoy’s voice had softened and deepened in sleep. Harry glanced at him again and found Malfoy’s eyes fastened on him. He reached out and laid a caressing hand on Harry’s elbow, his fingers tightening when Harry didn’t try to move it away.

“You call me by my first name too much,” Harry said.

Malfoy’s smile was slow in coming, but real. “This is one of the first times I’ve done it.”

“One too many.”

Harry didn’t really know why he continued to insult Malfoy that way. He knew that he had come too far to go back; he had admitted all that to himself while Malfoy was still oblivious. So why push up the barriers now and pretend they were anything other than porous?

Maybe because _Malfoy_ didn’t know that they had come that far. He still had the option to retreat if he wanted to. Harry looked at him speculatively, wondering if he would take the insults to heart.

Malfoy reached across the bed with a bare twitch of his arm and locked their rings again. Harry gritted his teeth against the shock of paralysis, but this time it didn’t come. Malfoy turned their hands back and forth, as if to admire the new platinum strand in the rings. 

“You’re striking out like a child who hurts his father because he can’t hurt the Healer,” he said, without looking up at Harry. “I’m not the one you want to hurt.”

Harry shrugged. All right, so Malfoy would come past the barriers, but he wasn’t doing it in a way that set Harry’s hackles bristling. Harry could live with that. “I told you last night, the one who did this to me is dead.”

“I know.” Malfoy looked up at him. “Do you fear that I’ll misuse the knowledge?”

“No,” Harry said slowly, feeling his way through this treacherous new territory between them. “But I fear that you’ll use it in some other way. I haven’t permitted even my friends to know much about this.”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“Because it’s traumatic.” Harry tried to pull his hand back—he knew that Malfoy could release the lock of the rings if he wanted to—and once again Malfoy kept his hand there, letting Harry tug against the weight of his arm. “Because they worried enough already, and seeing them suffer through it with me might be more than I could take.”

Malfoy said nothing, his eyes, lighter and more intelligent than Harry remembered him, studying his face. Harry waited, glancing away when that gaze became hard to take. He looked at their hands, imprisoned between them, because at least that made sense. They never would have been in this situation in the first place if not for the marriage bond, and they both still wanted it to end. That part was comprehensible.

*

Draco spread several scenarios before his mental eyes and held them there, delicate as snowflakes and spinning like them through the darkness.

He could agree with Harry, withdraw his hand, and let them both ignore this. That plan had multiple advantages. Draco could forget his glimpse of the darker part of Harry’s life. Harry could forget that he owed Draco his healing and that Draco owed him his life. Draco could continue with his plans to marry Astoria. 

He could tell Harry that he was being an idiot and urge him to talk to his friends. Advantages there as well. Harry’s friends would _want_ to know the details, Draco was sure, and they would take the burden of nursing Harry’s fears away from him. Draco didn’t want to stare at wounds, physical or mental. It wasn’t what he was meant for. He had a head for business, and for irritating his father, and for choosing a perfect pure-blood woman to continue his family line. He wasn’t entirely sure what Harry needed, whether Healer or confidant or someone more skilled than either, but he knew that he didn’t possess those particular talents.

He could take Harry to his mother. That would contain family business within the family, without involving him.

Or…

Or he could do as he had done last night, act on the platinum and admit what he should have admitted before. If Harry was not truly part of the family, then Draco had no right to make the demands on him that he had. But if he was, then Draco owed him more than frozen politeness and a room in the Manor.

Draco hated admitting he was wrong, but he hated being wrong a second time even more. That meant the last option, distasteful as it was, was really the only choice.

“I think you are underestimating both your friends’ ability to care for you and your own ability to endure their suffering secondhand,” he said, but shook his head when Harry started to speak. “I won’t make you tell them, though. I won’t insist that you speak to a Healer. I _do_ insist that you speak to me, since you’ve made such a good start on it already.”

Harry fell silent, staring at him. Draco studied him back, the clench and the curve of his jaw, the careful way he held his head, and wondered how he could have mistaken that holding of pain at bay for arrogance.

Well, he had known Harry when he was young, when he was Potter. It was natural that past impressions should carry into the present.

“All right,” Harry said. “But I’ve told you everything I can. All the—essential details.”

“I agree,” Draco said. He had, at the moment, no desire to force Harry back through the memories that had made him have to cast a Shield Charm on himself yesterday. Harry was already shifting as though he wanted to pull his hand away. Draco considered releasing the lock on the rings, but he would rather that the conditions of their association were set first. “You haven’t made the consequences clear, however.”

“Sometimes the memories come back, and I lash out the way I lashed out with magic at the—wizard,” Harry said, confirming one of Draco’s guesses. He let the pause before “wizard” escape unnoticed for now. “I need to be alone then. The protective spells and wards I’ve put on my door ought to be enough.”

“All right,” Draco said mildly.

“ _Really_ alone,” Harry emphasized, leaning forwards and glaring at him. “No one intruding in the middle of the night to rescue me, no matter what you may hear. No sending house-elves into the middle of a battle zone. They’re innocents, and there’s a chance that I could hurt them when I’m like that.”

“What about yourself?” Draco asked. “At the moment, it sounds as though you have more concerns for the lives of house-elves than you have for your own.”

Harry shrugged with one shoulder, but Draco saw the way his head tilted, and decided that he was probably carrying another burden that he didn’t want to share. Then he had to reconsider that, because Harry’s next words were offered with an honesty that was simply too devastating. “The beast hurt me more than I could ever hurt myself.”

“Even if you die?” Draco asked quietly. “I don’t know how violent these rages of yours are,” he added, when Harry stared at him. “Your spells prevented me from gaining the necessary knowledge, rather effectively. I don’t know if you might kill yourself some morning from the untreated wounds. The Healer couldn’t offer us much useful advice, you know that. It would help if you would tell me how worried I need to be.”

He thought of that as the most neutral thing he’d said all morning. There was no reason for it to make Harry tense up and look away, his head ducking as though to escape from a blow.

*

_How worried I need to be._

That was the exact point, though. That was the problem.

Harry had decided to live with his confession to Malfoy because it wasn’t as though he could back away from it, it wasn’t as though Malfoy would allow him to forget, and it wasn’t as though it would concern Malfoy greatly. Once Harry satisfied his curiosity, that ought to have been the end. What else would he want? 

But no, he was pressing forwards, on, his voice growing weightier the more the moments passed, and the more questions Harry answered.

Harry had a sudden, quicksilver flash of insight. _This is what Ginny was afraid of, what she saw happening when I started relaxing into breakfasts with Narcissa and skipping dinners with her. They’ll ask questions, and I’ll think it means nothing when I answer them, because they’re distant from me. But the more they ask, the more I answer, the closer we become, until we reach the point where I know them better than I know her._

_I’ve already given Malfoy details that I kept from Ginny._

Telling himself that he’d had little choice, given the spell’s effects on his wounds, didn’t do much to ease the part of himself that had suddenly frozen up. No wonder Ginny wouldn’t let him touch her, kiss her, or look too closely. She wanted to force him away if he was going, inevitably, to hurt her.

And yet, Harry didn’t see what else he could do, when going back wasn’t an option—what else he could do but go on, and hope that this was the one intimacy he would ever have to extend to Malfoy.

“What happens to me—it’s psychological, not physical,” he said, as he watched Malfoy’s face and wondered when it would close, when Malfoy would give the indefinable impression of having heard enough. Harry had learned to identify that set of mind rather well when he lived with the Dursleys, and he would take it as a signal of salvation here. “I live through the memories again. I had to use a lot of magic to—kill the creature and escape the house.”

_Kill. As if you were doing anything that clean._

Harry breathed and swallowed, and continued. “My mind goes back into that time and makes me feel as though the creature’s still alive. So my magic flails around trying to find and destroy an enemy. I’m not sure what would happen if I was in the same room as someone else. I’ve always been behind wards, or at the very least a Shield Charm, when I feel it starting to break loose. But this time I think I only had the wounds in the first place because that wizard had hit me with the decaying magic.”

“That was an odd curse,” Malfoy said, his eyes solemn. 

“It is that,” Harry agreed, relieved beyond words that Malfoy wasn’t going to press the point. “The Ministry did think that the people who captured me had given up, because there hasn’t been a sign of them for the past three months. Now that we know there are others out there, I can inform the Head Auror and we can hunt them.”

“And you think he was aiming at you.” Malfoy pulled his hand back finally, twisting it to unlock the rings. Harry felt his muscles all uncoil at once, and had to work hard to prevent himself from simply slumping back on the pillow. _I have to learn how to manipulate the rings free when Malfoy does that to me. It can’t be that hard, since he doesn’t take a long time._ “Not me.”

“I can’t be absolutely certain,” Harry admitted. The tingling sensation in the roof of his mouth, in the base of his bones, would mean nothing to Malfoy, who wasn’t an Auror and probably thought they hunted more by science than by instinct, as most people did. Harry _knew_ Malfoy was only in danger as his—husband, but he couldn’t translate that feeling for him. “I’d stay close to the Manor for the next few days, which is all the time it should take us to find these people. When you have to be out, be ready to cast a Shield Charm at all times. Or—do you have an artifact that extends wards around you? If you do, carry it.”

Malfoy frowned and folded his arms, as detached as a judge despite his half-flattened hair and the sharp eyes he used to peer at Harry. “I have one. I was going to offer it to you.”

“I’m better-trained to protect myself,” Harry said simply. “As you saw.”

“I know that this magic has a worse effect on you than on me,” Malfoy countered. “Carry it, and I won’t be tempted to lock you away behind the wards.”

“As if you could succeed if you tried,” muttered Harry. The Malfoy wards were good, but he had noted weaknesses in them, the same weaknesses that most standard wards had. Malfoy would be in for a very large surprise if he actually tried to close them around Harry and Harry was forced to respond.

Malfoy’s eyes darkened. “You’re family. I _hate_ threats to family. The war showed me how deep they strike into my soul, and for my sake as well as others’, I don’t allow that to happen now.”

Harry eyed him and waited for him to see the self-evident ridiculousness of his pronouncement. He didn’t look as though he would. In the end, Harry nodded. “If it would make you feel better, and as long as it doesn’t get in the way of doing a normal day’s work, I’ll carry it.”

“Good.” Malfoy turned away. “I’ll send a house-elf to fetch it from storage, and another elf to bring you breakfast.”

“No need for that last one,” Harry said, and started to stand. He got halfway up before his back seemed to lock into place all at once, as though the separate muscles had become a solid sheet of ice. He fell back, gasping. The gasps wanted to be screams, but he had got out of the habit of expressing his pain aloud in the darkness. He rolled his head over to stare at Malfoy. “What was that? Did the Healer give me something?”

Malfoy sneered at him. It made him look younger and more familiar, which meant it was immediately a thing to treasure as far as Harry was concerned. “Idiot. _That_ was your wounds objecting to the way you treat them. You were bleeding badly yesterday, Potter. You’re still weak. Relax. You’ve already missed half the workday, there’s no sense in going in now.”

Harry glanced up at the ornate clock on one wall—it had tiny silver swans swimming in a circle of pure blue water and clustering near the numbers of the hour and minute—and nodded reluctantly. It was noon already. He could go to the Ministry to show willing, but he’d spend a few hours sweating in pain in a chair, the way he felt now, and get no work done. “Fine. Let me contact Ron and Ginny, though, so they’ll know I haven’t disappeared.”

Malfoy had a ghost of a smile on his face as he clapped his hands and called the house-elves. Harry didn’t know why until after he had directed them to bring food, quills, parchment, ink, and the warding artifact. Then Malfoy murmured, “So you can be sensible, after all.”

“When I have to be,” Harry said. He shifted so that he was resting more comfortably against the pillows. Even that motion almost stole his breath. He hoped that he would have the strength to support a breakfast tray on his lap and lift the food to his lips, because letting an elf feed him would be a humiliation he’d always see glinting in Malfoy’s eyes from then on. “But being an Auror doesn’t give me many chances.”

“Do you regret you took that job?”

Harry stared. Malfoy lingered near and watched him, however, showing no sign that he intended the question as a joke.

“No,” Harry said at last. “Of course not. It’s the job where I can do the most good. And the only one where people would put up with me constantly putting myself in danger and poking my nose into mysteries, which I learned to like at Hogwarts.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed as if he were considering a complicated puzzle. “And yet, I do not know if you are the same person you were at Hogwarts.”

“Of course not, everyone grows and changes—” Harry began, wondering how in the world he had fallen into a civilized conversation with Malfoy.

“I meant,” Malfoy said, with a hauteur that withered Harry’s slowly-growing reply, “that you seem to have become a new person since—the creature had you. Much of what baffles me about you in the last few days might have come from there.”

Harry smiled at him. “Perhaps so,” he said. “But I refuse to let it define me. And now that you know all the relevant details, I would prefer not to discuss it again.”

Malfoy lifted his eyebrows, shrugged once, and turned to take the trays of food from the house-elf who had appeared next to the bed. Juli, Harry’s house-elf, was with her, carrying such a heavy stack of parchment that Harry was amazed it hadn’t toppled her over. She staggered over, placed it on the table next to him, and looked up at Harry with melting eyes. “Master Harry Malfoy is needing others things?”

“You’ve done fine, thank you, Juli,” Harry told her. That made her sniffle and seem on the edge of crying, but Malfoy plopped the tray in his lap before Harry could worry he’d upset her.

He blinked at the buttered toast, buttered scones, small pats of more butter and some kind of fruit spread, slices of oranges, cornflakes with attendant glass of milk, and cup of tea in front of him. Then he glanced sideways at Malfoy, who was settling back with what looked like an equally abundant breakfast, although some of the components were different.

“You’re kidding, right?” Harry asked.

“Kidding about what?” Malfoy bit into a piece of toast. He managed to make that look graceful.

“I never eat this much in the mornings,” Harry said.

“Yes, I can tell,” Malfoy said, with a raking glance that seemed to count all of Harry’s ribs under the robe.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Harry said, deciding that it couldn’t do much harm to pick up a piece of toast, “but I have a small breakfast because I get groggy and sleepy if I eat too much in the mornings. I make up for any lost food at lunch and dinner.”

“It’s almost afternoon right now,” Malfoy said. “Plenty to be made up for.”

Harry frowned at him around the corner of the piece of toast and shook his head. That sprayed crumbs everywhere, but Juli and the other elf who’d brought the trays Apparated into being and plucked them from the sheets before Harry could worry that he’d stained something expensive. “You can be really weird when you want to be,” he said, swallowing.

“In what ways?” Malfoy began eating from what looked like a piece of chicken. Harry could only fervently hope that he was having that because it was near lunch and that he didn’t _actually_ consider it breakfast.

“I mean—because you act as though I’m family sometimes, and a guest sometimes, and your enemy the rest,” Harry said. He waved his free hand between them; the other was rather occupied hesitating between the tea and the orange slices. The tea won. “ _This_ is weird. I don’t know how to classify this.”

“As the peace offering of someone who was terrified last night and is reassured now,” Malfoy murmured.

Harry scowled at him. “I told you, I’ve always managed to get behind wards or a Shield Charm in time.”

“There are other ways of being terrified,” Malfoy said, and caught and held his gaze.

Harry had to turn away in the end. There were some things that were just too intimate to talk with anyone about, especially someone whom he’d considered his enemy until a short while ago. He ate his food, listening to Malfoy order the house-elves about and then watching him from the corner of his eye as Malfoy read a Muggle newspaper. Whatever he saw there made his brow pucker.

He stayed right beside Harry as Harry wrote his letters to Ron and Ginny, and ordered them taken to the Malfoy owlery by the house-elves. He never looked bored, never winced when he surveyed his sheets, and never suggested that Harry go back to his own room. Harry knew that he would, of course, when night fell.

But for now, he was—

Not enjoying this. Not exactly. He still felt as though he’d swallowed glass talking about the darkness, as usual.

But this was a tiny little interlude cut out of the rest of the world. If they could endure like this until the marriage bond was broken, Harry thought, it might not be half bad. It was less complicated than any of the rest of his life, or, at least, the complexities could be held at bay.


	11. Wider Than the Heart Can Compass

“You can’t really believe that they wanted to help you.”

Harry sighed and looked down at the parchment spread on the desk in front of him, all the files that had miraculously managed to pile up over the single day that he was gone. Sometimes he wondered that the Ministry didn’t collapse from the sheer amount of parchment that filled it. That weight ought to be enough to knock down a _few_ walls.

“They were good about it,” he said quietly. He’d come in looking a bit cheerful this morning, and Ron had pounced on him at once, wanting to know how he could smile after a day of forced rest with the Malfoys. Harry had lost the good mood as he explained.

Anyway, it didn’t do any good. No matter how often he explained, Ron didn’t seem to believe it.

“This marriage is a sham, mate,” Ron hissed when his mouth was close enough to Harry’s ear that no one in the corridor could possibly overhear him. He shot a glance over his shoulder anyway, evidently thinking that something might have changed between one second and the next. “Don’t you _remember_? You never wanted to be married to the git. You want to be free and married to Ginny.”

“Yes,” Harry said firmly, “I do.” He tugged at the ring on his left hand and moved it further away from Ron, so he didn’t accidentally brush against it. He thought of Ginny, her sad smile and the way she’d listened to (and read, when he had to write them down) his stories of what had happened in the darkness. She was the woman for him, the only one for him. 

But he didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t remember that and _still_ value the Malfoys for what they were. Not competition for Ginny, just people that it turned out he had been unexpectedly able to trust and tolerate sharing a house with for a little while.

He glanced at Ron and smiled. “I’ll marry her,” he said. “And to make it easier, I have a kind of truce with Malfoy now. He’s not going to be as much of an interfering git as he had the potential to be when he thought I was embarrassing the family.”

“ _His_ family,” Ron corrected, but he lifted his head and leaned back against the table, balancing on his hands. “Huh. Really?”

Harry nodded. He didn’t intend to spend a lot of time and words protecting Malfoy and his parents, but on the other hand, he didn’t want Ron to have misconceptions about them. They were what they were: pure-bloods, annoying, but also capable of compassion to those they thought deserved it, and living in the shadow of torture, like him. Harry would go through his day without speaking about them, and he would make sure that he gave his friends every excuse to do the same.

“Well, then.” Ron seemed happy enough to leave the subject of the Malfoys behind, instead picking up the file on the top of his stack and holding it out to Harry. “What do you think of _this_ case? It’s got the blood and the symbolic patterns drawn in blood, but the patterns aren’t for a summoning. This one may be insane.”

“What, like most of them?” Harry countered, but took the file with a grimace. He hated the blood-oriented cases. It reminded him too much of Voldemort in the graveyard. From a distance of twelve years, he could recognize that as a twisted ritual, one that would have granted Voldemort more power than simple resurrection if he’d succeeded in killing Harry.

“What they’re doing makes sense to _them,_ at least,” Ron said, renewing an old argument. “Even though Dark Arts has warped their minds so much you practically have to twist your brain in knots to see what they’re driving at. But this one genuinely doesn’t seem to have any meaning.”

Harry grunted back, which made Ron argue some more, which made Harry focus some more on the file, and the subject of the Malfoys slipped away entirely. Harry rubbed a finger over the ring now and then in gratitude.

*

“Your father is more committed to having his own way than I imagined, Draco.”

Astoria had her head bowed over the photographs of past Malfoy wedding dresses as she made her criticism. When she lifted it and gave him a flashing glance from green eyes like the heart of summer, Draco was able to smile back. He understood the frustration that she must carry locked beneath her cool mask. She wasn’t impugning his family, not if he understood the true message behind her gentle words and the graceful turn of her neck.

“Yes,” Draco admitted, “he is.” He’d barely seen his father in the last week. Lucius no longer took meals with the family, and he seemed to spend most of his time in his study or his potions lab. Draco wondered idly if he was working on a potion to make Draco and Harry more palatable to each other. Draco could have told him he was wasting his time. Every “love” potion in existence produced only temporary lust. “But I can outwait him. So can you.”

He met and held Astoria’s eyes, to see if his trust in her strength of will and desire to marry him was misplaced. She only smiled at him and returned to the photographs.

Draco leaned back in his chair, well-pleased. He had chosen the best possible bride, he knew, despite the doubts his mother sometimes mentioned in a soft voice. She had the beauty and the blood, there was no question about that, and the fortune, though of course diminished from what it had once been; the Greengrass family had been rivals to the Malfoys in their time, but no more. Each day that passed confirmed her discretion and the balanced nature of her soul.

 _Like a marble door poised on hydraulic pistons,_ Draco thought, watching Astoria as she lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Even that gesture was done gracefully, though Draco hadn’t thought it could be, before. _She turns in the direction she should at the slightest push._

“We have not discussed,” Astoria murmured, her attention on her delicately painted nails and the pages she was turning, “how many children we would have.”

Draco nodded. “I would prefer one only, since the Malfoys have a tradition of only children. But your parents might want more than one grandchild. Don’t they?” he added. He had met Mr. and Mrs. Greengrass several times, but he had never engaged them in intimate conversation. One didn’t, when one was of a different generation and there were as many protocols and rules covering the situation as there were in this case.

Draco rubbed the ring.

 _All_ the protocols and rules.

“Hmm. I suspect they’re likely to get as many as they want and need from Daphne, actually,” Astoria said, her voice dry for some reason. She turned her head and fixed her gaze on him, so suddenly that Draco blinked, unprepared for the mask he wanted to fasten in place. “What about you, Draco? Is one enough?”

“Of course,” Draco said. He didn’t know what he might have said or done to give her a different impression, but it was serious, considering the way her fingers clamped down and wrinkled the page of photographs. “I would, in some ways, like more than one, in case it turns out that we have a Squib. But I respect the traditions more, and certainly it would be easier to open one’s heart to a single child.”

Astoria bowed her head and said nothing for some time. Then she said, “I’ve been speaking to your mother.”

Draco stared at her, not understanding. “About the marriage? What did I say or do to make you think—” There were certain things that a bride and her new mother-in-law might speak to one another about, but Draco didn’t think they had advanced to that stage yet. 

“I wanted to know what _she_ thought about the number of children,” Astoria said. “Whether they made the decision in concert, she and your father, or independently after your birth.” She stroked down the line of her arm. “She said that she would have liked to birth more children, but your birth cost her too much.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “She never told me that.”

“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” Astoria asked, giving him a mild look. Draco still flinched back as if he’d been stung. He was glad that he had chosen a wife who could hurt someone with her eyes, he told himself, a little stunned. Of course he was. He just hadn’t known that particular skill was one she had. “One doesn’t discuss such things with the single heir of the family line. My mother wouldn’t have spoken about it with me, and encouraged me to ask yours, if I was Daphne.”

Draco frowned at his hands. He had sometimes wished for siblings, but always accepted that it was right that he didn’t have any. His father might have wanted to disown him then when Draco disobeyed. And he would have had to share his toys. As an adult, there were other reasons to be glad. The Ministry had made him _the_ face of the Malfoy family, a more difficult task if there had been two children.

“We can have more than one child if you wish one, Astoria,” he said. “I didn’t—I never thought about it, because I assumed my parents had agreed, but if you want more than one, you should have it. You’re the one who will bear them, and the one who will make the decision.”

Astoria’s eyes widened, and she stood up and came around the table towards him. Draco rose to his feet to meet her. He was still a bit confused about what was happening, but he knew that one didn’t sit down in front of one’s future bride and look appealingly up at her. Until the wedding night came, decorum must be maintained.

“I didn’t mean that, Draco,” she said, and put her hand on his arm. Draco stroked the marble-strong, silk-soft fingers, and watched her face. “I thought you might not desire _any._ That was why I tried to hint that having at least one would make your mother happy as well as fulfill your obligations to the family. You care about her, I know. It’s in your eyes and your voice every time you mention her. _Her_ happiness might compel you if the goad of duty wasn’t enough.”

Draco stood still. For some reason, that she had manipulated him and confessed to the manipulation made his breath catch. And not in admiration.

He shook his head a moment later and said, “Astoria, I always knew that I would have to have children. Even if I hadn’t _wanted_ to follow in my parents’ footsteps, even if I hadn’t been the heir, I would have respected their traditions. Instead of asking you what I did or said to give you the impression that I wanted more children than one, I now have to ask where you received the impression that I wouldn’t do my duty.”

His voice had cooled in spite of himself as he spoke, but Astoria drew away with a slight smile and a bow of her head. “Your new husband,” she said. “He gives you a measure of independence from your father. There is no way that Lucius can force you to have grandchildren, even with fertility potions slipped into your wine, even if he bedazzles your mind and tries to make you forget the elementary precautions. I wondered which was stronger, your desire for predominance over your father or your devotion to your family.”

“The marriage bond was an accident.” Draco reached out and put his hand on her arm in turn, resisting the urge to squeeze. He did not like the suspicions she harbored of him, but then, he had not done his best to clarify them or make her forget them. He had thought a single conversation would suffice to make her fathom the situation and accept it. He should have known better. Astoria was two years younger than he was, and despite all her perfections, perhaps still prey to romantic delusions. “I concentrate on living with Potter because it is the best way to make my father see his intent to annoy me is not working and make him dissolve the bond. I don’t want Potter. I don’t want to stay married to him. But one puts up with what one has to, instead of raging against the heavens.”

Astoria studied him with calm eyes for a moment. “Yes,” she murmured at last. “I would have doubts of your dignity if you did that.”

“Instead, you have doubts about my devotion to family, to what’s right and proper,” Draco said. “How can I settle them?”

Astoria smiled at him. Draco knew, then, that she had achieved what she meant to achieve all along. He locked away the emotions that immediately tried to besiege him. He would have to deal with them later, when he was away from her. Thinking about them in front of her would involve her trying to counter them with something else.

“I’d like a declaration of intent.”

Draco blinked at her. “But we were keeping the marriage and the courting secret for a reason,” he said.

“I know.” Astoria’s eyes darkened, and Draco felt a distant pleasure that, after all, emotions of some kind were capable of touching her. “I want to renegotiate. It’s all very well to say that this marriage bond was forced by your father and has nothing to do with me, but its existence says that your father can pull some weight in choosing the people you marry. It makes you look less independent from him, Draco. I want _your_ declaration of intent, as the head of the Malfoy family, that you are going to marry me. The bond to Potter will look odd with that, yes, but all it will make the right people assume is that you have some plan to ensure that you get what you want out of this deal.” She smiled at him. “And you do.”

Draco nodded, but she would be foolish to assume that the gesture meant agreement, and from her expectant look, she knew that. “And what about the wrong people?”

Astoria turned her hand over, as if she could already feel the weight of the real Malfoy ring, not the one used for forced marriages, there. “Who cares what they think?”

Draco thought, _Harry would._ And then cursed himself for referring to the man by his first name again, as though it was necessary for them to do so.

_You know that you passed a barrier in that bed, Draco, and that you can’t step back over for wishing it._

Draco curled his lip, vowed never to let Astoria hear that particular thought—which she would _entirely_ misunderstand—and focused on his future wife again. “Very well,” he said. “It’ll take some time to draw up the proper declaration of intent. And you understand that it might take more time still for the marriage bond to dissolve. My father might decide that I’m defying him and deliberately extend it longer.”

Astoria had dimples when she smiled. Draco hadn’t noticed them before. He wondered idly if she kept them hidden most of the time because she knew how they marred the perfection of her face and made her expressions seem less serious. “Draco,” she said gently, “I think your father already knows that you’re defying him. He would have to be a fool not to know.”

“Well, he can be that,” Draco grumbled, and then sighed when she looked at him expectantly. “Yes, I know. It’s the best solution. And I do want to marry you, and I do want to have a single child to carry on the Malfoy line. Any more after that, we would have to discuss in concert.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, rather than that it is solely my decision,” Astoria said softly, leaning forwards to kiss his cheek. “I would not want to marry someone who would leave such important decisions up to someone else. I want someone who cares about the future of his family, more than the fleeting impulses of the moment.”

Draco nodded. _And I want someone who won’t manipulate me into violating the agreement that we both came up with._

But he said none of that, and he smiled and made small talk with Astoria gladly for the rest of their meeting. At the end of the appointed time, Astoria rose and swished back across the room where they always met, pausing at the door and glancing over her shoulder to offer a faint smile. She had become the perfect maiden again, without a sign that she had kissed and touched him earlier.

Draco could live with finding out that his betrothed was more passionate than he had suspected. She had proven in the same afternoon that she had an icily cool part of her mind and was not above using it.

No, he had not chosen wrongly.

But there was another conversation that he needed to have, and soon. He was already mentally preparing himself to have it when he stepped out of the fire that led him back to the Manor.

What had his mother been about, lending information about the family’s intimate life to Astoria? It was her right to speak of it, of course, but not until later in the courting process. And Draco knew his mother was too intelligent not to wonder what Astoria would do with the information once she had it.

He knew his mother did not doubt his devotion to his family, and if she had, she would have found some other means of expressing her disapproval. That left a purpose he did not see, and he was determined to drag it into the light.

Enough people already sought to control his life. He was not minded to tolerate another one.

*

Harry arrived back ho—

No. He arrived back at the _Manor._ That was the kind of thing that would happen if what Hermione had told him was true and the bond was trying to twist him to its purpose, he thought firmly as he took off his cloak and started to hang it up.

Juli appeared next to his feet in a flash and took the cloak away. Harry rolled his eyes and let her. He knew he would find it back in its proper place at the foot of the bed the next morning, washed and pressed. 

Hermione would probably give him that hard, intense stare of hers if she knew how much he was relying on house-elves, Harry thought, trudging up the stairs towards his bedroom. And _Malfoy_ house-elves at that. She’d be horrified. She would tell him to concentrate on something else, think about something other than the marriage bond, if only for the house-elves’ sake.

Harry smiled and reached out to open the door into his bedroom. He was making a good start on thinking of something else. The Ministry’s hunt for the wizards who could cast decay magic, and one of the cases he and Ron had been assigned, would absorb most of his time for the foreseeable future. And although it had turned out the mandolin wasn’t possible, George had had a guitar he didn’t want to play anymore. One new hobby, coming up.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry felt his muscles surge with adrenaline. He was lucky that he was facing the door, he thought, or he would have lashed out, and all of Draco’s praise for not destroying Malfoy property would be gone. He would at least have broken the balcony railing with the Blasting Curse he’d launch.

“Mr. Malfoy,” he said, turning around and making sure that his hand was on his wand and Lucius could see it. “Why are you calling me by that name? You were the one who took away my right to go by it.”

Lucius Malfoy looked at Harry down his nose, with a slight twist to his lips that made Harry’s fist itch. He held it down, kept it under control. He’d kept worse things under control since he became an Auror, including deliberate insults and the emotions that came when someone stared at or tried to touch his scars. And he didn’t want to ruin the new understanding that he’d gained with Draco this soon.

“Well?” he asked. “I assume that you have some reason for coming and talking to me when you’ve avoided it so far to skulk in your room like a child, but just standing here and staring at me doesn’t make it obvious.”

Lucius’s eyes half-shut, but Harry could see the hard glitter under the lids. “You should remember that I am in ultimate control of your fate,” he whispered. “I can take away the marriage bond, or I can let it remain, tangling you in misery for years.”

“Your son has a better flair for poetic metaphor than you do,” Harry told him, bored. “And your wife, even better. Your bragging hasn’t frightened me for a long time. Tell me what you came for, or go away.”

Lucius sneered and folded his arms. Harry could see the shake in his shoulders, and knew it came from suppressed rage. He held back the smirk and fastened his gaze on Lucius’s throat, as if considering the best way to tear it open.

Lucius paused. His breath came a little faster when he spoke. “You have a degree of influence over my son thanks to the marriage bond. Convince him to speak to me, to yield. I don’t need much. One vault is all I ask. A bit of control over one Malfoy business. He is right, we cannot publicly disobey the Wizengamot’s decree giving him the power of the head of the family. But a little, he might do.”

Harry laughed in his face. “Why should I, when you’re the one who’s responsible for the misery that ties us both together?”

“Because otherwise,” Lucius said, “I will _never_ release the marriage bond. This I swear.”

Harry stared at him. The anger and the fear had vanished as if they’d never been, and Lucius looked tall and confident and strong again, like someone who could legitimately be called the head of the Malfoy family. He looked down at Harry’s ring and shook his head.

“Does it make a chain?” he whispered. “Does it bind you? That is _nothing_ compared to what it will do to you if you can never marry, never have the woman of your choice and father children.”

“I’ve borne worse things,” Harry said in a low voice he hadn’t known could come out of him. “I can resist you. I can forfeit almost everything.” 

“Then think about Draco,” Lucius said. “He will soon issue instructions to his solicitor about a declaration of intent, saying that he intends to marry Astoria Greengrass in the future. The papers will take an interest. Some of his friends will laugh and turn their backs on him. At least some of those who have left you alone until now will wonder what it means, that the marriage bond is not real, and look into things. You can endure it. Can he?”

Harry’s breath escaped his teeth in a long hiss. He hated the thought of it, he hated that Draco’s happiness meant anything to him, but…

But he owed Draco for not being a bastard about the memories and his knowledge of the darkness. 

“Bastard,” he whispered, to the Malfoy he _could_ accuse.

“Think about it,” Lucius whispered back, and ghosted down the corridor, leaving Harry with his hand on his wand and visions of Lucius flying apart dancing behind his eyes.


	12. The Waste of a Breath

“I only want to know what you told Astoria, Mother.”

Narcissa sat with her hands folded in front of her and gave Draco the sweetest smile he had ever seen. It made his teeth grind. Normally he admired his mother’s ability to keep her composure no matter what happened, but this was different, this was important, and she didn’t seem to _see_ the difference. 

“What I told Astoria was for her ears,” Narcissa said mildly. “Information that I thought she would like to know when she marries into the family. The scions of the Black line had no trouble bearing multiple children. It must be the magic of the Malfoy line that limits the conception of each child to one.”

Draco glared at her. The _magic,_ she said, but he knew she was thinking of either ancestral curses or a genetic defect. She would not say so, which meant he couldn’t challenge her, and left the issue to hang between them.

Yes, she was subtle and manipulative in the gentlest ways and unlikely to hurt him directly. That did not, as Draco wished he had realized before now, make her easy to handle.

“Besides,” Narcissa added, crossing one leg over the other and examining Draco with calm, interested eyes, “it sounds as though she told you what I told her. Which was certainly her right, to share the facts that are part of your heritage and, now, hers. Why do you wish to hear those facts over again from my lips?”

Draco hesitated. He was left with two choices now, both of them unpalatable. He could lie to his mother, which would limit her ability to help him, and probably wouldn’t work. He had never been able to lie to her even when he was much adorable and inventive than he was now.

Or tell her the truth, and reveal how Astoria had twisted his intentions and forced his hand.

“Draco.”

The tone in her voice made Draco look back at his mother. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, as though she had to peer into a strong light. “Did Astoria threaten you? That would explain the way you hold yourself, as though you have found yourself on a string of razors above a great height.”

Draco relaxed a bit. He had found a difference between Astoria and his mother, and at the moment, that felt like a good thing. “You always did have a turn for metaphor, Mother,” he complimented her.

Narcissa flipped her fingers in a dismissive motion, still watching him. “If she said that she would reveal her secrets to someone outside the family, then I will speak with her.” _And settle her,_ she didn’t need to say. It shone from every line of her face, which suddenly looked like carved steel.

Draco stared at her. He had never seen his mother look that way before. His memories of her were marble—from her stillness, her pallor, the way she had restrained herself from stupidity during the war—or silk—her hair, the way she held him, her face when the war was over.

“No,” he said at last. “She didn’t threaten that. She—didn’t threaten me at all. She was very polite, very reasonable.”

“Well, then,” his mother said, and the steel flowed out of her. Possibly it had been his delusion after all. “Then what discontents you?”

Draco sighed. It was hard to describe to another person—and humiliating, moreover, that he had wound up in Astoria’s trap before he thought about what was happening. “She—said that she thought I might have tolerated the marriage bond because it gave me a measure of independence from Father. That I might have decided to value that more than the duty I was born to, the family I was bred from.”

Narcissa sat very still. “The questions about numbers of children,” she said, as if addressing herself, “could have had other motives. But not the questions about you, about how much time you spent in communion with your ancestors, about how much you love your world and your place in it. I see.” She nodded and turned to him.

The steel was back. Draco found himself sitting up straight, and a brief bolt of pity for Astoria traveled through him.

He had come home intending to question his mother about what she had _meant_ , speaking to his future wife like that, about sensitive matters. He had found himself gently handled into a position where he confessed to the truth instead, and felt glad that she didn’t focus her attention at the moment on him.

Whereas speaking with Astoria in much the same manner, a contest of wills, had hurt him and angered him and driven him out of countenance.

Yes, Astoria and his mother were more different than he had pictured them.

“Excuse me, Draco.” Narcissa stood and moved towards the door of the receiving room where he had found her. “I must compose the invitation to tea.”

Never had any words sounded so daunting, Draco thought, and stood up to bow briefly to her. She didn’t notice, but he was sure she would have if he had _failed_ to show that gesture of respect.

He sat back down, head spinning, filled with light and air and disbelief. Well. So his mother was on his side, and his bride was on the other. He had never wanted to fight either of them, of course, but if battle lines must be drawn up, this was the way he would prefer that they fall out.

Draco paused then, and flattened his hand out on his knee. He hated finding unexpected things in himself.

Wasn’t he looking for a partner whom he could stand beside as his mother could his father—at least, when his father wasn’t acting like a bully and idiot—and shouldn’t he have felt glad that Astoria was showing glimpses of her strength?

He should have, yes. She was a woman whom he had no reason to regret choosing. The only time he had ever seen a flaw in her composure was one he had put there, with his apparent allegiance to the marriage bond. Caught up in preserving his privacy from the eyes of the outside world, he had neglected to mention to Astoria how much he despised being Potter’s husband.

He should have. One could say that this entire situation came down to him refusing to include his bride in the circle of the family, to embrace her with information as he should have.

Draco leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes.

_One could say that. But one would be wrong._

Draco considered himself as having been hammered into being by the war as anvil and his parents’ desires as the smith. He was not perfect, but he was what he needed to be to fulfill his family’s goals and his deepest desires. He would accuse himself if necessary, drive himself in circles, live with the presence of a Potter in his family home, and put up with strife against his father that made it impossible for him to respect Lucius as he should.

But he would not lie to himself, at least once he found out the lie.

He had done all he could, all that tradition and Astoria asked of him, to include her in the marriage. If she wished to object to that, she could have done it with little more than a cool glance and a silence when he asked for her agreement. She had no reason to pen him up against his own reluctance and try to herd him like a recalcitrant bull.

 _That is what I resent most of all,_ Draco thought then, with a small smile. _The inelegance of the manipulation, the way that she showed her hand and drove the blades into my flesh instead of holding them as promises against my throat._

So. This situation was a mark against her. He would watch more objectively now, with less happy pride in his own choice. His pride had to bow before the needs of the family.

If Astoria turned out not to be the wife he needed, then he would cast her aside and choose someone else. She had forced the declaration of intent from him, but Draco knew more about lawyers and legalese than he had ever expected to after spending the past few years fencing with the Muggle world. A document could be suborned by itself.

Someone knocked on the door of the receiving room.

Draco stared, and then shook his head. Neither of his parents would have bothered, the house-elves would have Apparated in, and any of his friends would have been announced by the elves. That left only one person it _could_ be. “Come in, Potter.”

Potter stepped through the door and shut it quietly behind him. His face was set in a frown, his eyes dark as he worried his lower lip between his teeth. Then he shrugged as if walking into battle and came forwards to take the chair across from Draco.

That made a great enough difference from the last time he and Potter had been in close quarters to cause Draco to raise his eyebrows. “You find me more troublesome than the monsters you fight on a daily basis?” he asked. He would have added _Or the ones whose mark you wear on your skin?,_ but this really didn’t seem to be the right time for that.

“Not you, the news I came to tell you,” Potter said. “Your father confronted me. He said that I had to make you give him some power, a vault or an obligation for the family, or he would never release the marriage bond.”

Draco blinked. _Speaking of unsubtle manipulation._

A great, quiet anger swelled in him like a glacier growing. Potter laid his hand on his wand and shrugged when Draco peered at him. “Now you look like the monsters,” he said simply.

Draco half-closed his eyes. He could share his anger with his mother, _he_ could know that he was angry—and must to guide his actions correctly—but Potter did not deserve to know—

Draco opened his eyes, then, and glanced down at the platinum band in his ring, which shimmered with opalescent fire.

_What we’ve shared, and Potter doesn’t deserve to know something like this anger? You showed it clearly enough when you figured out what Father did with the marriage bond._

“I don’t mean to,” he said, and glanced up at Potter. “Do you—you believe he’s serious.”

Potter shrugged and nodded. “I think he expected us to kill each other long before now, or for you to go crawling to his feet and complain you couldn’t stand it anymore,” he said simply. “So he’s desperate. But he _does_ feel he holds the power in the situation. I mean, would he have threatened us if he didn’t?”

“You say ‘us’ as if it didn’t trouble you,” Draco murmured.

He was unprepared for the clear, dignified look Potter fixed him with. It was something to see those green eyes unglazed with pain, irritation, or exhaustion. Draco thought he preferred them this way.

“Of course the marriage bond troubles me,” Potter said. “But I take it as acknowledged, and move on. And we are in this together as far as resisting your father and finding some way to make him break his word—or change his mind—goes. Stop picking at my language and let’s decide what we’re going to do.”

Draco inclined his head, quietly impressed despite himself, and determined not to let Potter see _that,_ at least. “Very well. Then we need to make his life inconvenient for him, in a way that convinces him _we_ have the upper hand.” He wondered if he was savoring the word too much, but Potter’s thoughtful frown and slowly tapping wand distracted him.

“If he can live with what we’ve done so far,” Potter said, “I don’t see how we can. And I know you don’t want to make a public fuss.”

Draco gave him a slow smile. “There are other things he values—that are important to the family—beyond a public reputation.”

“Yeah, I know,” Potter said. “Money. Blood. Your whole family values those.” Draco opened his mouth to chide Potter for his sudden distance, but Potter had continued. “But we can’t waste money and we can’t magically make me completely pure-blood or completely Muggleborn. What would annoy him about those?”

“Not _waste_ ,” Draco said, and waited for Potter to figure it out.

Potter glared at him. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know how to spend money on something that would matter to your family, either.”

Draco stood up and took a step across the distance between them. Potter was on his feet in instants, his wand aimed at Draco’s flank. Draco stopped and thought of the way Potter had lain on his bed, and the wounds, to hold back the snapping words that wanted to rise. “We spend it on something that he considers part of the family but only provisionally,” Draco said. “We spend it on you.”

Potter squinted as though staring into the sun. “I don’t want to touch my vaults. They’re for my children, not me.”

 _Is that the reason you’re content to wear the standard robes you do and suffer from a pitiful lack of possessions?_ Draco thought, but he knew better than to say it aloud. Driving a wedge between them was what his father would want. “I know,” he said. “We’ll spend Malfoy money—” This time what he held back was the urge to speak a disquisition about how it was _all_ Malfoy money, with the Potter and Black vaults blended with theirs, and again he refrained. His father would have been proud of his self-control, had he known it existed. “And give you things that you want but which my father will see as unnecessary. I haven’t tested my power over the inheritance in many battles against my father,” he added thoughtfully. “It would be unbecoming. But what he has done to us is more so.”

Potter waited before he nodded. Draco peered at him, but could detect no _real_ reluctance in the curls of his mouth and the way he scratched the back of his neck a moment later—fingernails dangerously near the highest of the scars, Draco thought. “All right. As long as you make it gifts that I can leave here for someone else to use when I go.”

Draco frowned at him. “It would hurt you so much to take reminders of your marriage back to your home with you?”

“It would be your money, so they should stay with you.”

Draco gave up. “Very well.” He paused, then, tugged by temptation. “Do you want to tell my father our refusal? Or should I?”

“It wouldn’t be very _becoming_ of you to do so, would it?” Potter murmured, and the emotion in his voice tugged Draco’s lips up into a faint smile.

“No,” he admitted. “But I am the occasional recipient of a thought that would disgrace the Malfoy line. As long as I don’t act on it, my ancestors would not feel ashamed.”

“Then don’t act on it, I will,” Potter retorted, and walked to the door. “Besides, that way he can dump any anger he feels on me.”

Draco blinked. “You’re volunteering for that?”

Potter blinked back at him. “I’m used to standing between people and danger,” he said simply, and closed the door after him.

Draco was left, for some reason, amid all the other thoughts he could have had, wondering what Potter would think of the situation with Astoria.

*

Lucius chose to stage the confrontation at dinner that night.

Harry had known something was wrong as soon as he stepped into the dining room and saw both Malfoy parents sitting at the table instead of Narcissa alone. He had thought of turning around and leaving. He had a standing dinner invitation from Ron and Hermione for as long as this situation lasted, and one at the Burrow, too. He could practice his guitar there, and visit Ginny, and have a discussion about something other than ways to loosen the marriage bond, which, of course, were necessary, but which made him wish he didn't have it as part of his life even more than usual.

Then Draco came in behind him, and cast him an oblique look on the way to the table. Harry sighed. He was committed, after all. He followed Draco and sat down in a chair beside him, instead of across from him, as he usually did. (Well, "usually." He had only eaten two other dinners with the family, and one of them was the one where Draco had insulted Hermione. Harry didn't think two nights and a lot of rudeness enough to establish a pattern).

Lucius watched him closely as Harry arranged the napkin in his lap and checked the arrangement of his cutlery. The house-elves appeared with the first course, a huge salad scattered with thick slices of apple and egg, and Harry turned his head to study it.

"Don't thank them," Draco said out of the corner of his mouth.

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Don't you want your father to enjoy the benefits of snot-covered cuisine?" he muttered.

"If you could ensure the dishes went to him first, I wouldn't mind it," Draco said. "But they serve me first as head of the family."

That answered Harry's question, which he'd been opening his mouth to ask—why Draco didn't simply order the elves to serve his father before anyone else. He closed his lips and nodded. Draco was actually more reasonable with the answers than Harry had thought he was, until they were forced into openness.

 _But I hope that doesn't happen again,_ he thought, picking at the salad when the elves placed it on his plate. _Either I'd have to explain—more, or I'd have to learn a secret of his that runs as deep, and I think either one would be uncomfortable._

"Mr. Potter."

Harry looked up. Lucius was leaning forwards with one arm braced on the table and a tentative smile on his face. Harry wondered if he thought the expression would fool stupid Gryffindors. 

_Of course not,_ he decided a minute later. _He's playing for the benefit of his wife and son. He thinks that I'm stupid enough to threaten Draco for him, he must think that I'm stupid enough not to see anything but what's right in front of me._

"We had a discussion earlier,” Lucius said. “I need your answer.”

“I already told Draco all about it,” Harry said. He glanced sideways at Draco from the corner of his eye, wondering if he would prefer to handle this. Harry had said he would. Then again, Harry didn’t think either of them had anticipated that Lucius would move so openly, and in front of Narcissa, too.

_I was right. He is desperate._

“And?” Lucius pushed, his other hand touching the table now. Harry wondered if he would actually launch himself into the air and forwards across it. He doubted it, but with the man acting strange and unpredictable, it was hard to be certain. 

Draco gestured with his fork as if pointing a house-elf in the direction of his empty wineglass, but Harry sat to the side and could see it better. He sighed. “Mr. Malfoy, I’m not going to blackmail my husband. The answer is no.”

Lucius sat abruptly backwards. His eyes were narrowed, his hands twitching and then closing as if he were trying to take hold of an extra pair of knives in front of him. Harry kept his face clear and guileless, but beneath the table, put a hand on his wand.

“Lucius?” Narcissa reached out to touch her husband’s wrist.

Draco watched everything with the faintest smile, his elbow curved around his plate as if the food were the only important thing in the world. Watching him, Harry thought, you might get the impression that it was. He was a better actor than Harry would have suspected from watching emotions twitch through him in Hogwarts.

_But we’ve all grown up since then._

Lucius stood, pushing his chair back. He nodded at his wife and started to walk out of the room. Draco parted his lips, a small chuckle escaping.

Harry quivered, strung on wires, and so he was the one most ready to move when Lucius swung back around.

He didn’t have his wand in his hand that Harry could see, but it didn’t matter. The glitter of his eyes as they fixed on Draco and the way his hands parted from each other said that he had prepared _some_ curse. He might be capable of wandless magic. It was always better never to underestimate the enemy.

Harry whirled out of the chair and between Lucius and Draco, moving like a throwing star.

The curse that sped towards him was like a reaching hand, with webs between the fingers and claws on the ends of the nails. Harry didn’t waste time analyzing it, or wondering what in the world it was meant to do to Draco, the son that Lucius supposedly loved so much. He simply brought his wand down and hissed, “ _Finite Incantatem_ ” with all the breath and will he could put behind the words.

The air in between him and Lucius flickered and turned the color of frost. Lucius fell back a step with a snarl. Harry watched the reaching hand falter and then turn into wisps of smoke.

Even a wisp of smoke could be dangerous. Harry kept a sharp eye on them until he was sure they’d dissipated entirely, and then turned to watch Draco. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Draco’s color was high—probably, Harry thought, because of the disrespect that his father had showed him more than because of fear—and he nodded. Harry turned back to Lucius. When the man moved, he moved, too, making sure that he was still acting as a living shield in front of Draco.

“You don’t need to do that.” Draco’s voice was low and an inch away from his ear. “I am not helpless.”

“No, but I’m the one with training to protect people’s lives,” Harry said. He could see by the balked snarl in Lucius’s face that he would strike again if he thought himself unwatched. “Be still a moment. He might do something else.”

Lucius settled for saying, in a low and vicious voice as if it was an insult that Harry would care about, “You disgrace the family.” Then he walked to the door, but Harry thought the walk real this time, much like the retreat of an injured crab.

“Father. You’re wrong.”

Lucius paused, twisting his head to listen to Draco’s words. Harry quivered on the edge of tension again, ready to move.

“Harry is more part of the family than you are.” Draco leaned forwards past Harry’s shoulder, and there was a sharpness to his smile that Harry didn’t like. “Remember that.”

Lucius turned away before Harry could see his reaction and left. That was probably as much of an admission of fear as a frightened expression, Harry had to admit, if one knew how to read it.

He sighed and lowered his wand, swallowing the aftermath of his adrenaline. Then he turned to Draco, intending to ask if he knew the spell Lucius had tried to use on him.

Draco seized Harry’s left hand and held it up. Harry stared, but swallowed his curses, too, when he saw Narcissa looking at him.

Among the joined metals on both rings was a single bright thread of new steel.

“I think, Mother,” Draco said, “that it’s time for a council of war we should have had long since.” He turned his head, and his fingers, though not his ring, locked with Harry’s. “Come, Harry.”


	13. Separated by Steel

_Chapter Thirteen—Separated by Steel_

Draco led Harry with him by the simple expedient of keeping one hand on his arm and one eye on the stairs, so that he knew when Harry was considering darting off and could block the possible exits. They _had_ to speak about this. Things had changed enormously in the space of a few moments, and Draco’s ears were still ringing with the crumbling of his mental walls.

He had sat down to dinner believing the situation would endure in dreary tedium for as long as it pleased his father. Lucius had finally ventured out of his lab, which meant he had given up on potions for binding them closer together, and also that his mother’s scolding had worn off. Draco had waited for the insults, but they hadn’t come. Perhaps Lucius was wary about testing the limits of Narcissa’s tolerance so soon after infuriating her. 

Draco hadn’t seen much of the spell that his father cast at him when he started to leave the room, for the rather simple reason that Harry’s body was in the way. But since the magic of the bond would permit no violence in the family, he knew it could be no ordinary curse.

And then he saw the color of the rising wisps of smoke, and knew what it was.

Lucius would have cast a spell that would allow him to literally cup Draco’s heart in his hands. He could speed it up or slow it down with a touch of his fingers to a designated artifact—probably the new ring that Draco had seen flashing on his finger during dinner—and as long as he didn’t stop the heartbeat and kill Draco, the bond wouldn’t consider it violence. It would have been an effective threat. Just one apparent heart attack or sleeping session during an important business meeting would have undermined Draco’s importance and competence in the eyes of several of the Muggles he dealt with. And it could have been even more damaging when he handled the wizarding end of the business.

Harry had put himself in the way of the curse without recognizing it, Draco was fairly sure. His instincts would have hurled him out of the chair before he had time to see the telltale color of the wisps of smoke, and the spell was rare. Draco wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been left out of Auror training.

So now they had the steel band to deal with, adding strength to both the rings and the marriage bond in a way that Draco doubted would please Potter.

And they had the permission his father had given him by breaking their tacit truce with a spell that would have revealed something wrong to eyes outside the family’s. Draco had avoided many measures that would annoy his father because he wanted to keep the traditions of respect for his parents alive.

The Heart-Holding Curse said clearer than words that his father had lost all equivalent respect for him.

It was war.

*

Harry glanced around the room that Malfoy and his mother had led him to and tried not to shiver. There wasn’t a color in it that held any warmth. Silver and white in the mirror about the mantle, silver and white in the unadorned marble of the fireplace and the tapestries that crowded the walls, and silver and white again in the carpets on the floors. The chairs held the colors of ice and polar bear fur. Harry felt as though he would smear dirt on them merely by sitting.

But Malfoy didn’t seem to mind about that. He hauled Harry towards the fireplace—he still hadn’t let go of his hand, ever since he’d shown Harry the new band of metal in the rings—and indicated he should sit in one of the purer chairs. Harry pointedly pulled his hand away and took his seat.

Malfoy sat immediately beside him instead of seeking one of the couches, watching him from the corner of an eye. Harry pulled his collar away from his throat. The intensity in the room was suffocating, and it didn’t help that Narcissa wore a similar expression on her face. 

Neither of them spoke while a house-elf came in and lit the fire. Harry reckoned it was up to him. “What does this mean?” he asked, holding up the ring. “And why did he try to hurt you?”

“It’s called the Heart-Holding Curse,” Draco said, “and it would have allowed him to affect my heartbeat.” His eyes caught the firelight as he turned his face towards Harry. “You can imagine the consequences.”

Harry grimaced. “Yeah.” He glanced at Narcissa, expecting her to take some part in the conversation, but her brow was furrowed and she apparently carried on some internal debate that she wasn’t going to allow anyone to share in. “All right. So what do we do about this?” He turned his hand over so that the ring caught the firelight.

“All the metals have a different meaning,” Draco said. He took Harry’s hand again and held it in his, staring at the ring, ignoring the way that Harry tugged to free himself this time. “The platinum symbolizes our joined lives because of a life-debt.”

“Then it should have been platinum again,” Harry said. He swallowed. The air in the room was hard to breathe, charged as if with lightning. “Since I did it again.”

Draco glanced up at him, and his eyes were brilliant with reflected meanings Harry didn’t want to think about. He stared down at the carpet, but it was hard to avoid that lambent gaze. “No. The platinum only appears once, though it may grow stronger and thicker when new life-debts are contracted. The steel means something else.”

“ _What,_ for Merlin’s sake?” Harry was starting to think that pure-bloods lived in suspense for the fun of it. He wondered what Draco’s reaction would be if Harry tried to get him to read a Muggle thriller and explained that it was how the rest of the world managed not to go around filled with the same feelings all the time.

“That we have changed each other’s lives,” Draco said. “Intervened in something that would not have killed us, but would have caused us to make—certain decisions. If my father had succeeded in casting the Heart-Holding Curse, he would have added an extra subjection to him, one that I couldn’t escape simply by convincing him to dissolve the marriage bond. I have my freedom because of you.” He raised Harry’s hand further, tugging it towards him until Harry had to lean in or be dumped on the floor. “Thank you.”

Harry tore his eyes away by force this time. If he went on looking at Malfoy too long, his heart would start thumping, and he’d get addicted to silence the way they were. “Welcome,” he muttered. “But—I don’t understand. That seems like an awfully strange thing for a twist of metal to symbolize.”

“The same thing would have happened if Draco had saved your own freedom, or prevented you from making a momentous decision about your future,” Narcissa said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the room. Harry looked at her, and frowned. Her face was pale, and her hands, clasped in front of her, made slow twisting motions like snakes in pain. “The steel is the steel of a sword blade, severing a life into two halves. It is an ultimately meaningful symbol, though perhaps without the deep associations given the other metals in the ring.”

Harry shrugged, which was awkward when Draco still had possession of one of his arms. “Fine. I don’t see what platinum has to do with saving lives, either. And you _don’t_ have to answer,” he added quickly, when he saw Narcissa opening her mouth.

Her lips twitched, and she bowed her head. “Very well, Harry.” Her voice had a new tone on his name, but Harry didn’t want to think about that right now, so he was glad when she turned to her son and added, “What do you intend to do, Draco?”

Draco’s eyes had a new light in them now, and he released Harry’s hand. Harry pulled it back into his lap and rubbed the fingers. He thought they might have gone slightly numb from the strength of Draco’s grip. They were certainly tingling in ways that they had no business tingling if they hadn’t been asleep.

“We had already planned to spend money from the Malfoy vaults for Harry, in ways that annoyed Father,” Draco said. “I intend to go further than that now. We are going to spend a _lot_ of money.” He smiled like a wolf. “And we are going to publicly let it be known that the gifts are for Harry, and that my father opposes them, and that, as head of the Malfoy family, I have made the decision to tell him to go hang.”

“Oi!” Harry leaned in and caught Draco’s eye. “I didn’t agree to that.”

“Oh, I plan to do other things as well, of course,” Draco assured him. “We can tell the truth of the marriage bond now. I did not before, because I did not want to embarrass the family. But my father forfeited his right to be in the family with his attack on the head of the line tonight. To embarrass _him_ , as we will by telling the truth—that this marriage bond is no calculated, clever move of alliance, but the result of a childish tantrum—is my primary goal at the moment.” His eyes had that dangerous shine again.

Harry opened his mouth and then shut it again. Far be it from him to argue against what Draco did to his father. Embarrass and hurt Lucius enough, and it might be possible to make him dissolve the stupid bond.

But…

“Your father—you’re really going to cut your father out of the family?” he asked in a daze. He knew now what had made Narcissa look so pensive, but he would have given up the knowledge gladly for some means of understanding what Draco was _thinking_.

Draco inclined his head. “Why shouldn’t I? He is no longer the head of the family. He exercised the one right left to him by tying us in a forced marriage, and as long as I played the role of obedient son, he had the right to do that, the one right the Wizengamot left him. But then he attacked again, and this time he got caught. I did not change my role. I violated none of the tenets that tie us together. He has, and while I forgave him for the first time because he honored the letter if not the spirit that binds us, this time I need not. And I will make him suffer.”

Harry winced. _That’s the real reason I’ll never fit in with the Malfoys,_ he thought. _Not the rich decorations and the house-elves and all the rest of it. I can ignore that, or get used to it. It’s because they’re too cold, and they live too much inside the rules. I could never abandon someone who was related to me that way, no matter how much trouble they caused._

He sought for something else to distract himself from his own uncomfortable thoughts, which could lead to him either despise or pity Draco if he wasn’t careful, and said, “Um. If the bond prohibits violence between members of the family, does that mean that he can attack us now that he’s cut out of it?”

“You need not worry,” Draco said. “I do not intend to perform the rituals of disinheritance that would affect the magic. I will treat him as an outcast socially and financially, exercising the right of not listening to him that I have technically had since the Wizengamot gave me the vaults and the property.” Harry didn’t think there was a single tooth in his head left hidden by his grin. “That will embarrass him more than a ritual could. He can always tell himself that he was right if I went far enough to disown him. This way, he can stay in the house—he’ll have to, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go—and see the life of the family going on without him, and have to realize that he cheated himself out of it.”

Harry couldn’t _help_ the words that rose to his lips then. “And you don’t think that you’ll ever regret it? You’ll never forgive him?”

*

Draco turned and stared at him. Harry avoided his eyes at once, staring down at the floor and tugging on the ring as though he wished he could rip it right off his finger. Impossible as long as Lucius didn’t change his mind, of course.

“You don’t understand how great an offense this is,” Draco said. He hardly stopped himself from turning it into a question. “It was committed against you as much as against us. You are the one who had to stop it, to defend yourself and me from a spell that he should never have cast in the first place. You’re as much a victim of the marriage bond as I am.”

Harry fidgeted with the ring again, hard enough to scrape his finger and draw a thin line of blood. Draco wondered what he really found more disturbing, the sight of that wound or that Harry didn’t flinch at it. He reached out and grasped Harry’s hand, forcibly stilling it.

“I know,” Harry said. “But I don’t want—I don’t have the same perceptions of family that you do, Draco. You know that.” Draco blinked, partially in response to the words and partially to the sound of his name on Harry’s lips. Unexpectedly casual, as if Harry had been calling him that in his head for a while. “I just think that you need your father more than you need to antagonize him.”

Draco tilted his head at his mother. He thought this a question Narcissa was more competent to answer than he was.

“Not when he is like this.” His mother leaned forwards gravely, hands clasped on her knees. She had grief wound through the back of her voice like a subtle silver thread in a tapestry, but her words were clear. “He has become so frantic for money and prestige that he would try to control his own son and disregard the feelings of his wife.” Draco winced for her, as she would not for herself. He knew what lay behind all those words, as Harry could not. “It is for the best that we hold off and give him a chance to recover himself.”

Harry frowned and turned away. “But you would let him back in the family if he _did_ change?”

Draco shifted his shoulders. “The question has never arisen. The relatives cast out of the Malfoy family before either left the house and went elsewhere—not an option for my father, since he has no resources of his own—or accepted their marginal status. They didn’t change their minds. They didn’t regret their actions.”

Harry turned to gape at him. Draco frowned. It didn’t make him attractive. “What, _never_? Weren’t they human?”

“Of course,” Draco said impatiently. He had thought that Harry had grown beyond some of his more childish perceptions where other people were concerned. “But reared in a different culture from you, part of a different tradition. They knew that begging for admittance back into the family would probably be fruitless, and therefore they didn’t want to chance it.”

Harry shook his head, which Draco wasn’t about to mistake for a motion of agreement. “They preferred exile to a moment of embarrassment?”

“Humiliation,” his mother said gently. “Not the same thing.”

“Don’t you have traces of that?” Draco asked, because the steel band in the ring kept catching his eye, and it annoyed him that Harry would try to exile himself to a place of good sense and righteous horror outside the family that he _belonged_ to. “You went through intense pain, you came near death, rather than confess the secret of the scars on your back to anyone.”

“We aren’t talking about that,” Harry said, with a pleasant smile that didn’t hide the burn in his eyes. “I just want to know—Draco, I care about how happy you are. And I don’t think turning your back on your father will make you happy, not to mention it’ll lessen our chances of ever getting out of the marriage bond.”

“I would rather be unhappy than let my father control my life,” Draco said.

“But no one said you had to.” Harry leaned forwards, eyes fastened on his face, and Draco felt a prickle down his spine. Had Harry forgotten that his mother was here, listening to every word? Draco certainly hadn’t. “That isn’t the alternative. You could promise to forgive him if he removes the marriage bond.” Harry ended the statement on a rising, pleased tone, as if he imagined that he had found a solution to the problem of their being tied together.

“And then he would be back in a position where he could once more exert control, and perhaps begin the marriage bond again immediately,” Draco snapped. “Or he might use it on someone else, and this time bind me to a fool or a person intent on bringing down the family. I think my father, if he saw the chance, would destroy the family rather than let another rule it. That has nearly happened before, and often.”

Harry shook his head. “Okay, fine, I knew it couldn’t be that easy,” he said, though with a downwards turn of his lips that said he really _had_ expected it to be that easy, that he had found some solution no one had seen before. “But—no forgiveness? Either?”

Draco clasped Harry’s hand again, turning it so that he could see the ring. “Why do you care so much about my happiness?” he asked. “Yes, we’re trying to get along, but that doesn’t mean you need to worry about my father and I getting along.”

*

Harry shook his head a second time. Draco kept looking at the rings, as if the platinum and steel bands drew his attention as much as they did Harry’s. How could he glance at them constantly and yet not know the answer to his questions? 

“Because we’re bound by more than the marriage bond now,” he said. “I’ve saved your life, and your freedom. Excuse me for caring about someone I’ve done that for.”

Draco’s eyes shifted to his, burning. Harry sighed. The burn was anger, and they were separated as much as they were tied. He pulled his hand free and rose to his feet, pacing back and forth. Narcissa raised her eyebrow at him, but at the moment, Harry could care less if his action was unbecoming of a Malfoy. He had to work out some of the energy, or he’d snap at Draco and add to his unhappiness. 

“Family matters,” he said. “A lot. It always has, to me. I just don’t want to see you tear your family apart because you’re stubborn.”

“ _I’m_ stubborn,” Draco said, and turned his head to the side, the curve of his neck conveying volumes without words.

“Fine. Both of you are stubborn,” Harry said. “Happy?”

Draco smoothed his lips down into a tempered smile. “You were the one who diagnosed me as not being that, I believe.”

Harry sighed in disgust. “ _Look._ What Lucius did to you—to us—is stupid and tiresome and something I want gone. But there has to be something you can do besides make him _more_ hopeless and frantic and desperate. What he feels now is nothing compared to what he’ll do when he realizes that you’ve cut him out of everything.”

“You have disregarded one factor you should have remembered.”

It took Harry a moment to realize that it was Narcissa who’d spoken. He turned to her and blinked.

She was on her feet, although she stood in one place instead of pacing as he did. Harry knew better than to think that meant she was harmless, though, or calm. He could sense the coiled energy flowing through her muscles as she watched him. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and if he had been in a situation where he’d been hunting her, he would have kept an eye on them. It was difficult to look away from them, anyway, even reminding himself that she wasn’t an enemy.

“I have some influence over my husband,” Narcissa said. “I have not exercised it so far because I wanted to leave him his pride, and because, yes, conflict is unbecoming in a family such as ours. But I can use it now.”

“So that means that you think you can make him ask for Draco’s forgiveness?”

Narcissa sighed and shook her head. “I can make him rue the day. And if Draco decides to let him back into the family someday—”

“I won’t.”

Narcissa turned her head, and her gaze passed over Draco in a way that made him recoil against the back of the chair. Harry cocked his head. He had a feeling that he had missed something major there, but then again, since he was mostly outside the family anyway, whatever Draco thought, he shouldn’t have expected to understand everything happening around him.

“I come from the Blacks,” she said. “That is a fact your father has reminded me of more than once, when he was angry at me. He meant it to signify that I did not understand all the traditions of the Malfoy blood. And you are a fool, Draco, if you think you know all the traditions of my family. You chose not to.” Her voice softened a bit, though the words she spoke next didn’t sound much softer to Harry than plate armor. “You chose your loyalty long ago.”

Draco swallowed and blinked, then nodded. “All right, Mother. I give you permission, as the head of the family, to do what you can with him.”

Narcissa’s smile was sweet and edged. “Thank you.” She turned her head away and left the room.

Harry waited, but Draco simply sat there, staring into the fire, twisting the ring on one finger. He cleared his throat. “So that’s it? You cut your father out of any power and influence, and you set your mother on him? And you spend some money?” He felt a bubbling, boiling feeling behind his forehead, and he gritted his teeth. He wanted to do something about the marriage bond _now,_ but he knew he couldn’t. He recognized the feeling, besides. It had got him into trouble more than once when it came to situations where he needed patience, not simply courage. “And tell the public the bond is false?”

“Those first three actions are more than enough,” Draco said. “I think telling the truth would complicate our lives unnecessarily with the press at the moment, so on that I will wait.” He looked at Harry, and his eyes glinted like his mother’s smile had. “It will hurt him in ways that you have no conceptions of, since you don’t understand our family.”

“Yeah,” Harry snapped back. “And I’m glad of that.”

Draco rose fluidly to his feet and moved forwards. Harry turned so that he had his side to the door, defeating both Draco’s clasp for his hand and the secondary grab that he made for Harry’s arm.

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Draco murmured, voice like a flowing river. “You should understand something better that you are a part of for the foreseeable future. You yourself claimed that you were part of it enough to care about my happiness.”

“Yeah,” Harry said again. “But from what I’ve seen, _you_ don’t care about happiness, your own or your father’s or your mother’s. That means that you won’t care about mine.”

Draco frowned slightly, as though confronted with an alien language he had to translate into English. “You were the one claiming we were tied—”  
‘  
“By the rings,” Harry said. “By the secrets that we’ve already shared with one another. Nothing else. Nothing more. We _can’t_ share with one another, since if there’s one thing this conversation has showed, it’s that we care about entirely different things.” He was shaking, and he didn’t know why.

“Harry,” Draco said, and stepped to the side as though he meant to circle behind him.

Harry stiffened and hissed at him—not Parseltongue, merely a breath of hateful sound—and Draco stopped, his face softening. “My apologies. I forgot how much you hate to have anyone near your back.”

Harry nodded and left the room. He didn’t know what he would say if he stayed there, but he had the feeling he would regret it later. He really didn’t want to hurt Draco.

On the other hand, at the moment, he really didn’t want to be close to him, either.

 _The end of this marriage bond can’t come soon enough,_ he thought, as he sealed the protective spells on his room behind him and flopped onto his bed on his stomach, staring out the window. _I’ve been in a lot more pain, but never a situation where I felt I was cracking eggshells all around me._


	14. A Distance Greater Than Rooms

“You will not refuse to hear me.”

His mother’s voice was soft and certain. Draco made sure the Disillusionment Charm was wrapped more firmly around himself than it had ever been—he added an extra layer to it and a spell that should renew it if it began to fade—before he followed her through the door of his father’s sitting room.

Lucius sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, staring out the window that reflected an imaginary view of mountains gone purple with distance, no snow showing on their peaks. Draco had still been young when he realized that his father looked this way when he wanted others to think he was pensive, rather than when he actually was. Draco snorted safely behind the protection of the charm. His father had far more style and show than significance at the bottom of him.

_As you do? Harry seemed to think so._

Draco found himself tapping one hand on a wall before he thought about it, a babyish gesture he had once believed would ward off bad luck. But it was foolish here, with his parents liable to notice. Luckily, Lucius was too caught up in his petulance and his mother was too caught up in her focus on him.

She would not be pleased if she knew that he was here. But Draco had been unable to stay away, even if she meant it as a private conversation. He _had_ to see what happened when she disciplined his father, if there was a chance that Draco could reclaim him despite the proud tradition of absolutism he had recited to Harry.

“I won’t refuse,” Lucius said, when enough time had passed that Draco wondered why his mother’s legs didn’t tremble. “But there isn’t a word you can say that will alter my stance. That ignorant pup is going to put me out of the family for this, and you needn’t pretend that you’re going to object to that. The way I can feel you smirking at my back right now, you’ll applaud it.”

“I came to congratulate you,” Narcissa said serenely.

Lucius swung around to stare at her, and Draco felt his jaw drop. He was doubly glad for the charm then, since it prevented the loss of his dignity as well as his mother noticing his presence. 

“I do beg your pardon,” Lucius said, in tones that made it clear he didn’t.

“You achieved the greatest victory for the family on the day that you exiled yourself from it.” Narcissa touched her fingers together and stared at the mountains in turn. Draco wondered what she saw in them. “When Harry defended Draco’s freedom, it caused steel to appear in the marriage ring.” She turned back to Lucius, and her smile was almost gentle, in the way that death might be gentle for a mouse the owl swooped on. “I think you know what that means.”

“Potter would never be that foolish,” Lucius said, but there was so much doubt behind his words they were scarcely more than a breath.

“What makes you think that he knew what it meant?” Narcissa queried, her eyebrows rising. “He reacted on instinct, and he didn’t know that steel could enter the rings until we explained it to him. Even then, he found the symbolism odd.” Her voice gentled further. Draco would have backed away by now, but his father simply sat still, stunned and perplexed by her news, staring at her. “He and Draco will have a hard time being parted now. Harry has defended Draco’s life and his freedom. One could say, his sanity and his power. I suppose the magic in the marriage rings does not agree with me, or the bronze and the iron would have appeared by now. But they are coming.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Lucius whispered. Draco wondered that, too. He had counted on meeting his father in some distant corridor, bowing to him, and making sure that the sunlight flashed from the steel to let him know what had happened.

“Because this is what you did for the family,” Narcissa said. “You chose better than Draco would have chosen for himself. You chose someone who defends your son out of sheer disinterested compassion and goodness, not someone who serves us for his part in the dream of wealth and glory.”

Draco had to brace a hand on the wall this time, and not because he wanted to ward off bad luck. If his mother was right…if she saw that much in Potter…

“Potter has his own ambitions,” Lucius said. “If he protected Draco, it came from fear of what would happen to him if Draco died or was controlled and the marriage bond severed.” He pushed himself off the chair, but didn’t yet walk back and forth, staring at his wife instead. Draco knew he could never understand all the emotions their silent communion throbbed with. 

“Call him Harry,” Narcissa said, and her voice made Lucius flinch. “You were the one who took the right to his other name from him.”

“Potter is— _he_ is not the kind of man you imagine,” Lucius continued stubbornly. “He can’t be. You don’t see his motive now, Narcissa, but you will. He may seem simple, compassionate, and naïve, but he would have died years ago if he really was as much like that as he portrays himself.”

“He would need only a fraction of that honor he carries about with him to make him the best choice for our family,” Narcissa said. “And he brought two vaults with him when he married into the family. And he calls Draco by his first name, now, and he lets Draco touch him in the way that only one spouse should touch another. I congratulate you, deeply and truly, on what you’ve achieved.” She made a sweeping curtsey that sent her skirts rustling along the floor. “He is _for_ us and _of_ us. Although Draco must exile you, and I doubt he will forgive you, we have a new member to console us for your loss.” She turned around and walked gracefully to the door, her footsteps not making a sound now.

“Narcissa.”

His father’s voice was the first thing that made Draco feel ashamed about seeing this. His eyes watered, and he turned away. Although he still couldn’t prevent himself from listening, at least he could keep from looking at his father’s face.

“You can’t mean this,” Lucius said. “You can’t mean that Draco will be content with Potter—Harry, if you insist—instead of the Greengrass girl he chose. He wants children. He wants someone pure-blooded, someone who will follow the traditions of our family and her own. You cannot convince me that he does _not_.”

Narcissa said nothing for long enough that Draco thought she was certain to agree. She would be mad if she didn’t. Then she said, in a voice that was so low it teased along the edges of sound, “And what makes you think that those are the things that Draco values the most in the world?”

“Because I raised him,” Lucius said, voice nothing at the moment but the sound of bafflement.

“And so did I.”

The tone was enough to make Draco glance up again, abandoning his counting of the patterns in the wood and marble of the walls. Narcissa smiled like a wolf at her husband, and Draco thought of the Black portraits that hung in his mother’s wing. Half of them depicted ancestors who were mad or twisted by their use of Dark magic, and the other half had smiles like this, at least some of the time Draco had passed them. He knew that his mother’s “Black traditions” he had turned his back on had something to do with it.

If he had chosen his loyalties differently, he might have smiled like that.

But his loyalties were what they were, and that meant he followed his mother in silent bewilderment. Of course he wanted children and a pure-blood wife and to follow the traditions. If he hadn’t, then he would have yielded to the stubborn misery he could see in Harry’s eyes and explained that he would let Lucius back into the family, that he would find some way to forgive him for the unforgivable.

If he was what his mother had proclaimed he was—weak—he would have explained his pain to Harry instead of burying it in the answers that had to come out of his mouth, and holding to tradition because it had a regularity that would protect him.

But he wasn’t weak. He wasn’t a Black. He had chosen his loyalties, and that was all there was to it. His mother might not like it, but she was badly mistaken in her characterization of him if she thought that he would change his mind. She and Harry both, Draco thought, believed not only in his weakness but that it was a good thing.

It wasn’t until he reached his room that he remembered something else his mother had said, something he should have questioned earlier. She had congratulated his father—

_But of course most of what she said must be sarcasm, designed to catch his father off-balance and grant her some measure of control in the situation—_

On choosing better for Draco than Draco had. She had indicated Harry as a better choice than Astoria.

Of course it was sarcasm, Draco reassured himself again as he sat on his bed and extended his foot to let a house-elf take his boots. She had wielded a generality—that Lucius’s taste and choices were bad—against a generality—that he might actually have granted Draco a measure of independence by doing something he had thought would impede him. If Lucius had chosen someone else for the bond, if Draco had chosen someone other than Astoria, she would have said the same thing. It was her chosen tactic to make Lucius surrender.

But as he lay down and drew the covers over him, Draco couldn’t escape the disconcerting feeling that his mother had been speaking in specifics.

It would have been much better if he knew _why_.

*

“I think that we might have a lead on the Ness case,” Ron said when Harry walked into the office the next morning. “I heard—”

Then he looked at Harry, and his expression congealed. “I’ll kill him,” he said quietly.

Harry blinked at him. “Who? Ness? He’s already dead. We’re trying to catch the person who did it, remember?” Ron got like this sometimes, loopy and forgetful, though usually it was after a night of thoroughly shagging Hermione. Harry firmly put the image that resulted out of his head and waited for his best mate to come back to normal.

“No,” Ron said, and stepped right up into his space, reaching out to put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry started and flinched, ducking his head, and Ron paused, then drew his hand back with a murmured apology so that his fingers rested a few inches away from the invisible scars. “Malfoy. He did something, didn’t he? You never come in looking like that unless someone close to you has hurt you, and I know that all of us weren’t with you last night.”

Harry blinked again. “But Malfoy and I aren’t close,” he said.

“You’re getting there,” Ron said grimly. “It’s impossible to spend that much time around a person and not start understanding them a little better unless you’re a sociopath, and with you, you start trying to _like_ the bastards, too. So Malfoy hurt you. How? If he forbade you to see Ginny or something—”

“No.” Harry reached up and squeezed Ron’s hand, using the gesture as an excuse to move his hand away from his shoulder. It was nothing personal, just that if Ron kept touching him there he was going to strike out, and he didn’t want to do that. “Something nasty happened between him and his father last night, and I let it spill over onto me.” That was as close as he thought he could come to describing what had happened without betraying Draco’s confidence, and he didn’t want to do that.

_Although if I did, he might cast me out of the family and never forgive me. That would solve a few of my problems._

“You’re right,” he continued, sitting down behind his desk and reminding himself what his best friend looked like again. “I was getting too close. We share some things, and that can’t be helped, but I’m not going to spend any more time around him as long as I can help it. Spend my nights at the Manor, and that’s all. Can you ‘arrange’ to have me invited over to your house or your mum’s for the next few evenings?”

Ron gave him a sly grin. Harry found himself mentally comparing it to Draco’s sly grin, and then shook away the comparison in irritation. He didn’t even want to think of his two families in the same _breath_ if he could help it.

_I do not have two families. I have one and one that I belong to by accident._

“We’d like nothing better,” Ron said cheerfully. Then he cast Harry a stern glance. “Ginny’s doing her pining thing, you know.”

Harry mentally tried to fit “Ginny” and “pining” in the same sentence, then shook his head. “Don’t know what you mean, mate.”

“The part where’s trying to pretend she doesn’t miss you, and keeps staring out the window and talking about how early marriage isn’t such a good idea after all,” Ron said promptly. Then his voice softened. “I know you’ve been busy with the case and trying to recover from your induction into the Den of Evil, mate. I know. But it really would help if you came over for dinner tonight.”

Harry nodded. “Absolutely planning to.” Then he looked down at the folder in front of him and flipped it open. At the moment, the Ness case, disgusting complications and all, sounded easier to deal with than Ginny. “What’s your lead?”

*

“Did you receive the invitation from my mother for tea?” Draco asked Astoria. He was studying the photograph of the dress she’d selected, and frowning. The woman in the picture was beautiful, of course, one of the Rosier daughters who had married into the Malfoy family, but the way she turned back and forth made it obvious that the dress’s skirt was too wide and poison-green rather than the delicate shade of emerald green it had first looked like.

“I did. I refused it.”

All the muscles in Draco’s neck stiffened, but he kept his eyes on the dress, as if memorizing a catalogue of its deficiencies to present to his bride. Then he leaned back in his chair and fixed her with an even look.

“She had something particular to say to you,” he murmured. 

Astoria sat across the table from him, her poise as perfect as always. Today she wore a sheer white gown that made her look as if she was clothed in icebergs. One hand held a cup of tea, but she hadn’t brought it to her lips in a few minutes. Her eyes were gentle and straightforward and so utterly false that Draco thought she would have choked on Veritaserum.

“I know what she wished to say to me,” Astoria murmured back, voice calm and cold as the water off a glacier. “I don’t wish to hear it. Any mutually agreeable communication can be made by owl.”

Draco didn’t let himself shift back in the chair, because that would be a sign of weakness and one he didn’t want to reveal. He wished, briefly, that he was back in the Manor and had had the chance to speak with his mother anew before this happened. He had confidence in his own strategy-building abilities, less when he had to improvise.

“Astoria,” he said.

“You place the comfort and trust of your family before mine.”

“Well, of _course_ ,” Draco said, giving her a slow, burning look. She had attacked first, which he hadn’t anticipated, but on the other hand, her attack was utter nonsense. “My first loyalty lies with them. You seemed certain and content it would be so, when you trusted my commitment to traditions the other day.”

“But I will be part of your family. Or so I thought.” Astoria lowered her eyes and let her fingers play lightly over her gown, as though she actually was the modest maiden Draco had chosen. On the other hand, would modesty by itself have attracted him? It usually implied naiveté, and he could not use a bride who wandered through the glades of pure-blood tradition like a fawn in its first year of life. “Your loyalties should include me. If I wish to conduct a certain conversation with written words instead of spoken ones, then you should oblige me.”

“Indulge you, rather,” Draco corrected. “My mother would not ask for an indulgence like this.”

“And your father?” Astoria’s smile curdled as she met his eyes. “Your husband?”

“My father might,” Draco said. “I had no idea you wished me to place you in the same category as him.”

Astoria flung her head up, and then seemed to wish she hadn’t done that. Her chin came down again, but the sharp tremors that cut through her body said that Draco’s words had done their bladed work. Draco watched her, and said nothing, and smiled.

“You place your mother above me,” Astoria whispered.

“I have known her longer. We share the same blood.”

“That—is not—” Astoria seemed uncertain of how to go on. She bowed her head for a moment, and then moved the attack in a new direction, one Draco had not anticipated. “Your husband influences you in this.”

Draco shook his head. “He refused most emphatically last night to have anything to do with how I run the family.”

“He influences you without your knowledge.” Astoria’s eyes, cutting to him now, had a trapped gleam in them that reminded Draco of the eyes of a tiger in a cage. Or how his father had looked after Harry defeated the Heart-Holding Curse.

Or how Harry had looked, when he realized Draco had seen his scars.

Draco took a long, deliberate moment, gazing at Astoria, to categorize the differences in her eyes from Harry’s, and then put all thought of his husband from his head. Harry did _not_ influence how he dealt with Astoria. He could not. He had shown that he hadn’t the least concept of subtlety, let alone the way Draco had to put personal happiness, indeed all personal emotions, aside when dealing with other pure-bloods.

_Don’t think of him. He wouldn’t think of you._

“I know myself,” he said. “I know my father. I thought I knew you, but I believe now that was an illusion based on partial knowledge and the desire to see more than what lay there behind your mask.”

Only Astoria’s breathing disturbed her stillness. “Say what you mean, then,” she murmured. “If you are changing your mind, if you do not wish to marry me, then say it.”

 _She did it again!_ Draco was furious with himself that he failed continually to cut off her tactic of direct confrontation. She constantly changed the terms of their discourse, and he fell for it. He had no answer, and each silent, scrambling moment that passed without one increased the iced-over edge of triumph in Astoria’s eyes.

_Meet directness with directness. The Gryffindor way that Harry would undoubtedly prefer. He might have something to teach you after all._

Draco leaned back in his chair and brought his fingertips together gently. “Everyone is allowed a certain number of errors in a lifetime,” he said. “I flatter myself that I have committed fewer than most, for my age.”

Astoria’s brow wrinkled as she stared at him. She immediately smoothed it flat again, of course, but Draco had seen the change and had to hold back his own smile. “Say what you mean,” she repeated.

“I have made a mistake in choosing you as my betrothed.” Draco stood and inclined his head. “I will return the marks of favor you gave me, my lady, including all your letters. You need not fear I will keep one. I have no desire to make another mistake.”

Astoria started to her feet, and then flushed a delicate crimson from neck to brow, like an ivory rose crossed with a pink one. “Draco,” she said. “Wait.”

“Lady.” Draco let his smile grow sharper, his eyes grow more distant. “I will let _no one_ have a measure of control over me. I sought a partnership, and you showed me a harness. Step out of my way.”

Astoria’s hands twisted together, clenching back and forth. Draco watched her to see if she would say anything else, but she remained mute, lips pressed together in a way that couldn’t distract him from the blank hopelessness in her eyes.

Draco bowed low, and went.

He had the oddest sensation as he walked out of the Greengrass home, planning to Apparate rather than Floo so that Astoria would not have the chance to have an unfortunate moment. It was as though he had unwound a chain from his neck that had clasped him too tightly, cutting into his collarbone and skin.

He did not know what it meant. He only knew his determination, to spend a few days seeking to understand himself and what he wanted, and then to begin a search for another bride.

*

Harry stepped back into the Manor that night with a small smile. He’d had a lovely evening at the Weasleys’. He’d spoken with Ginny, he’d played the guitar—badly—and he and Bill and Fleur’s children had played a game that seemed to have as its sole rules that you ran around the room and shrieked. Harry had rolled over with Victoire sitting on his chest and Dominique pulling on his hair, and the contentment that had struck him was like an ocean wave of pure happiness.

_Yes. Children like this, a family life like this—this is what I want._

He stepped through the door, gave his cloak to Juli when she popped up, and then hesitated. A small door he hadn’t noticed until now stood off to the side, open. Harry stole up to it and peered through the crack.

Malfoy sat on a stool facing the fire, his head bowed. He had one hand smoothing up and down his knee as though he had to gentle himself, and his other hand held a parchment. From the single lines on the parchment, Harry thought they might be names. He wasn’t sure, though, and he couldn’t see much of Malfoy’s expression from here. He hesitated.

_You’re calling him Malfoy instead of Draco again._

Well, wasn’t that the way it should be? The marriage bond hadn’t stolen _his_ last name. And their conversation last night had proven that Harry didn’t understand much of anything at all. He didn’t fit in with the Malfoy traditions, he didn’t know how to speak to them or say what they wanted to hear, and he cared too much about different things.

The impulse he’d had, to go into the room and ask Malfoy what was wrong, died stillborn. Harry turned away and climbed the stairs.

_Ginny would be proud of you._

It didn’t even take him more than an hour to fall asleep.


	15. Ringed

“I think it for the best.”

That was all his mother said when Draco told her at breakfast the next morning that he had decided to part from Astoria. Draco watched her smile over the cup of tea. It was faint, as faint as an echo stirred by running one’s finger around the rim of a wineglass, but there.

Draco laid his toast down, untasted except by the fingers that had pulled it apart. He had forgone his usual breakfast in bed in the hopes that his mother would have some comfort to give him. He should have known better. His mother had looked too cold the day he told her about Astoria’s manipulations.

“It does mean that I have to choose someone else,” he said. “Court someone else. It might be as long as two years before I could be married, given that rumors will spread among some of the eligible women because of what resulted from my engagement to Astoria.”

Narcissa sat down her cup exactly in the middle of her saucer and shook her head. “You overestimate the anxiety Astoria will have to expose you. Those who matter know that the Malfoys do not break off a betrothal for no reason, and I can conceive of no lie that will not show her in a bad light as well.” She gave Draco a smile that was like light glinting off the crests of waves, and therefore not to be trusted. But Draco could not have braced himself enough for her next words. “Besides, what is this talk of marriage in a year, in two years? You are already married.”

“You know why that bond doesn’t matter, can’t be allowed to matter,” Draco said. He realized that his finger had strayed to his ring, and forced it to lie flat on the table. “I have to find a wife.”

“Draco.” His mother did nothing but look at him, her frown faint but present. Draco flinched and stared at the side of the silver sugar bowl until it vanished, called back to the kitchens by an elf.

He felt like one of the small cringing greyhounds Pansy’s mother used to keep. And he couldn’t retort, because his mother’s behavior was justified. He glanced at the ring again, where the steel and the platinum gleamed.

It was too late to pretend that the bond meant nothing, even if the ultimate end to this connection was hidden down a tunnel of impenetrable darkness. He couldn’t pull back. Neither could Harry. If steel and platinum shone there now, the bond had already altered, and would alter them further.

He wanted to know what had caused the scars on Harry’s back. One did not have such curiosity about someone too small to be worth notice. Nor did one have it about an enemy, unless one intended to use the wounds as a weak point. And Draco knew he would never do that. He would, rather, conceal the scars from the world that would tear, ravening, into a new weakness in their favorite hero.

But there still remained problems that it seemed to him his mother was willfully ignoring with her focus on the marriage bond. “What about children?” he whispered. “What about traditions?”

“You should read more on traditions other than the courting ones,” his mother said, and stood. “The books that have occupied your hand and your mind and your shelves of late are exclusively related to that, are they not?”

“You know they are,” Draco said, and leaned back in his chair so that he could keep his gaze squarely on his mother. “Have been.”

Narcissa gave him a grave smile for choosing the appropriate tense and glided to the door. Draco watched her. He had often compared the way she walked to Astoria walking, sometimes faulting his chosen bride, sometimes thinking there was little to spare between them, but now he wondered less about his mother’s grace and more about the control she must exercise over her body in order to have it in the first place.

“Then find others,” his mother said. “Think about who stands beside you, who behind, who in front of.” She gave him a more brilliant smile this time, a smile like sunlight that he could trust, and left the room.

_Beside, behind, in front of._

It had been Harry several times so far for each, of course. Draco frowned and tilted his head to consider the problem from this new angle. Yes, he could see why his mother welcomed Harry into the family. He could see why she would recommend living with the inevitable for the moment. She would welcome peace and politeness over the tempests that might otherwise have resulted.

But marriage to Harry as a permanent solution? She had hinted delicately at it just now, and Draco did not understand why. No matter what books he read, it was still true that Harry could give him no children, and that Malfoy traditions on the necessity of children carrying the name and blood were inflexible.

But his mother would not recommend books simply to have him flip the pages and smell the ink. Draco rose to his feet. He could read the books in the library, and look at the names on his list of eligible pure-blood women in the same room.

*

Harry closed his eyes and breathed as shallowly as he could. Breathing any deeper than that would draw in the scent of the blood-stink all around the edges of the room.

They had thought they knew where Ness’s killer was keeping his next victim, and that he would wait to murder her because he needed a proper alignment of the stars to achieve the magical effect he wanted. He and Ron had moved as soon as they had proper backup and the notice of several scouts as to what the building looked like on the inside.

It had turned out that the killer was practical enough not to care about star alignments when there were Aurors coming at him.

Harry forced himself to open his eyes and look. Ever since the darkness, it had become necessary for him to bear witness. He hadn’t seen, then, the damage that the beast did to his body, or what he ate and drank, or even what ate him. He would see this.

Another person had died, the way he could have, suffering in agony, the way he had. At least he had been lucky enough to escape.

Harry shut down, hard, the thoughts that tried to squirm into his mind when he was reminded of his escape, and began to circle the edge of the mess that had once been a human being.

Blood drew an enormous circle, dripping in thick, messy runnels around the edges of it, as though the killer had simply scooped it out of the body and thrown it. That had been exactly what happened, as far as they could tell, but then again, it was somewhat hard to know for certain. The air was filled with a strange blend of Dark magic and a spell that was meant to disguise the killer’s signature. So far, the furiously working team behind Harry hadn’t managed to isolate the curse that had finished the job.

Thicker, more viscous fluids, from the organs and the eyes of the victim, lay studded along the blood-circle. Harry stared at a dark brown splotch for a long moment before realizing what it was, and why it smelled so bad. He turned his head away and breathed carefully through his nose as he called for Auror Wilkinson, the one of the team who knew the most about the ways magic blended.

Wilkinson stepped up to his side a moment later, a tall woman with enough dark hair to make a bear feel envious and calm grey eyes. “Yes, Auror? What is it?”

“The brown,” Harry said, and glanced into her face. Looking at her eyes, which surveyed the scene with sadness but no excessive horror, calmed him, he found. “We’re looking for a curse that must at least strangle its victim, if the way the bowels let loose was any indication.”

Wilkinson made a soft noise of acknowledgment and nodded. “That narrows it down,” she said, and squeezed Harry’s shoulder for a moment. “Thank you, Auror.” She moved back to her task, saying something that made the rest of the team turn around and listen, as eager as dogs on the hunt.

_I wonder if I found her calming because her eyes look so much like Draco’s._

Harry clenched his hands. He couldn’t think of Malfoy at a moment like this, when he was on the job and had to figure out more things as fast as possible so that more people wouldn’t get killed. He scraped the ring until his finger bled and used the small, sharp pain to focus. 

It didn’t matter how much it hurt to look at the blood. It couldn’t have hurt as much as living—dying—through it.

If there was one thing Harry knew how to do, it was suffer and endure.

*

Draco had taken both lunch and dinner in the library. That mattered less than it would have otherwise, because his father was sulking in his rooms and Harry hadn’t come home yet. His mother would understand that he didn’t want to leave the books, and that of course he would chew carefully enough that no crumbs or stains got on the pages.

Draco closed the last book he’d read and stared at the fire.

Well. Apparently the tradition that said every Malfoy forced marriage had worked out down the years with either the breaking of the bond or the snatched partner submitting to the family and having children was wrong after all.

Or, at least, glossed the edge cases over.

It had turned out that many of the forced marriages resulted in compound arrangements. The head of the family hadn’t yielded, which meant the bond had to endure. But in cases where the Malfoy heir had married either a man or a female partner utterly unwilling to bear him children, he had found a woman who would, and conducted certain rituals of inheritance before the conception to ensure that the child would be born legitimate.

At least, legitimate according to the ancestral magic and the heirlooms, such as the Manor, that needed to be transferred from one proper heir to another. And that was the only kind of legitimacy Draco knew. 

It made sense when he thought about it. If there were rituals that could make someone born to the blood, like Lucius, an outcast in the eyes of the magic, there should be an opposite, balanced set of rituals that would bring someone who had a taint or stain on them—bastardy, being born outside the blood—into the family.

Draco stared unseeing at the books. The compound arrangement and the inheritance of a child conceived outside the marriage bed was the most common story.

The second most common was when the female partner had submitted or the head of the family had yielded and let the Malfoy heir marry someone willingly. But there was a third, which had occurred at least two times, and resulted in the birth of Draco’s own great-great-grandfather and at least one of his cousins.

The third story let the other partner in the forced marriage conceive a child with someone else, with rituals of disinheritance performed before the conception—to take away the blood traits that the child would otherwise inherit from non-Malfoy parents—and rituals of acceptance and welcome performed afterwards. The child would be born Malfoy as truly as if it had come from Malfoy blood, Malfoy seed or womb.

Draco rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, feeling the scrape of his ring against his lips. The world was wilder and stranger than he had ever guessed, and he was beginning to understand how much his perception of Malfoy inheritance and traditions had been controlled by what his father allowed him to learn.

If that was the case, if he had to go beyond the walls that his father’s fear had raised, the chains that his father’s will had laid on him—

_Then I will have to reconsider whether I want to disrupt the marriage bond._

Draco laid his hands flat on his knees and stared into the fire. Conflicting impulses fought for control of him, a dusty, nasty battle that he always hated when it started. On the one hand, he had told Astoria that he wanted an equal partner, and Harry might well be that for him. And if the idea of children could be addressed as easily by looking to the traditions and creatively interpreting them, Draco might find answers there for his other problems with staying married to Harry as well.

But on the other, he had also told Astoria that he wanted no one to have control of him. That remained true. He had tolerated it when he was a child, but as the head of the Malfoy line, he _must_ have his independence, his ability to say no if that was what he wanted.

_And this marriage bond is a means of control._

Draco looked down at the ring again. The steel shone like the silver, the platinum like the fire itself. Draco stared at them and soberly considered, for the first time, that the ring might already have acquired enough strength to be a permanent chain on them, whether or not he changed his mind about Harry’s qualities.

 _Steel is one of the strongest bands,_ the book he had just been reading about forced marriages chattered away in the back of his head. _The kinds of decisions that change destinies and lives are represented by steel._

And Harry had taken the chance that he would become submissive to his father again away. Draco had the freedom to break off the betrothal to Astoria, to contemplate whether liberty or satisfaction meant more to him, to sit here dreaming of what life might be like with a more stubborn and independent spouse at his side.

_This is…strange._

It was, and oddly enough, although it was his usual tactic, Draco didn’t think he would get far trying to reason through this by himself. He rose to his feet with a frown and went to find Harry.

*

Harry ran his hands through his hair and stared at them again. Although he’d spent ten minutes in one of the less expensive downstairs bathrooms in the Manor, and the blood was entirely gone from around his knuckles and under his fingernails, he was sure that he could feel the stain.

If he had moved faster, if he had known the killer was ruthless—he should have assumed that rather than just thinking that he would be the kind of mystical idiot it was easy to defeat—if he had set up wards that would prevent the specific kind of Dark magic the killer had worked with. (Except that they still didn’t know exactly what kind that was, although Auror Wilkinson and her team had worked over the site for hours). If, if, if.

Harry roughly shook his head. He couldn’t keep on thinking like this. It was one of the first things they had taught him in the Aurors, that to spend too much time looking back and obsessing over one’s failures meant that you couldn’t study the future and prevent other failures. Ultimately, the dead could only be avenged; the living could be protected. That training had stood him in good stead when it came to forgetting and ignoring his missing three months.

Harry stepped out of the bathroom and watched the softly glowing torches in the walls snuff out behind him. He shook his head again. “How much magic do they use to keep things like that going?” he muttered.

“Less than I can tell you’ve used today.”

Harry spun around. Draco was leaning on the wall outside the bathroom, watching him with a kind of motionless intensity that made Harry think about his mother and about Voldemort. Harry would have reached down and touched his wand, but that was a bit silly. He cleared his throat. “You can feel that I’ve used a lot of magic?” he asked, because it was usually only Ron, his partner, who could tell that.

“Yes.” Draco held up his left hand, so the ring shone. “It’s one of the things that indicates the bond is tying us together more closely.”

Harry nodded with a grimace. “Look, I’ve been thinking about that. I know it must have felt I was—avoiding you for the last few days, but it’s for the best. We have to try to get further apart, or the bond will change our emotions and our desires. I don’t want that to happen.”

“Because you want to be free of the bond and to marry Weasley,” Draco said, in a voice that, for some reason, was flat.

“Er, yes.” Harry pushed his hand through his hair again. He thought he would have preferred the venom that Draco usually showed when talking about the Weasleys to the hardness his eyes had taken on. And the way he _looked_ , as though Harry had committed some massive betrayal by wanting to marry a woman. “So we should stay as far apart from each other as possible, right? Sorry for not telling you that last night, but you looked like you had a bad day and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“You _saw_ me last night?” Draco’s eyebrows rose.

“Er,” Harry said. “Shit.” He sighed. “Yeah, I did. When I came home, I saw you sitting there with a list of some kind in your hand, and I thought about coming in to talk, but—the bond, you know?” He shrugged.

“No, I _don’t_ know.” Draco’s voice had taken on a tone that was far too sweet. “The bond should have made you want to come closer to me, not keep away.”

Harry winced. _He’s going to make me sweat it._ Well, maybe that was all he deserved, after ignoring him last night when he could have gone in and eased at least some of the pain Draco was feeling.

But that was where he got confused, because shouldn’t he stay away from Draco? Wasn’t that the _right_ thing to do, if he was going to work up to the magical challenge to the bond Hermione had talked about? If he was going to marry Ginny? If he was going to stop the pining Ron seemed to think she was doing in the meantime?

Draco had moved, he saw when he looked up from the mental swirl consuming him. He stood right in front of Harry, and a deep, relaxed smile stretched his lips. His hand rested on the doorway of the bathroom, beside Harry’s head. He leaned in close, and Harry could see the depths of blue-grey in his eyes. He decided that he hadn’t been mistaken with his earlier thought, and that he had liked looking into Wilkinson’s eyes because they did remind him of Draco’s.

“I don’t think you can do that,” Draco said. His voice was low, friendly, and comfortable. “I think you’re too compassionate and decent to stay away from me. Aren’t you.”

“Damn it,” Harry said, and his confusion gave him strength to fold his arms and glare back at Draco. “What do you _want_? You ought to be cheering me on if you really want to be free of the bond.”

“That’s the matter we have to deal with,” Draco said, and took his hand and turned it over. He didn’t lock their rings, but Harry saw a literal spark of magic leap between them. “I am no longer sure I want to.”

“You’re mad,” Harry said, and pulled his hand free. Draco just watched him do it, patiently, as if to say that he could touch Harry again whenever he wanted to. “If you want to marry Astoria—”

“I broke off my engagement with Astoria.”

Harry stared at him. Draco raised his eyebrows and managed to look sorrowful and smug both at once, which convinced Harry the sorrow was feigned.

“Like I said,” Harry repeated a minute later. “Mad.”

“Astoria was trying to control me,” Draco said, utterly unruffled. He moved a step closer. Harry retreated a step in consequence, and clenched his teeth. He didn’t like looking like a coward, but staying close to Draco right now was the worse idea. “I don’t like people who do that.”

“Then you shouldn’t like the marriage bond,” Harry retorted smartly, “since your father set it up to control you. You should join me in breaking free of it as soon as we can.”

Draco shrugged. “It’s true that was his original purpose, but I doubt that the bond is functioning the way he wanted it to anymore. The steel is significant, Harry. My whole life would have changed, been different, if you hadn’t interfered in the Heart-Holding Curse. That’s what it means.”

“But can you know that you want to change your life again?” Harry asked, half-desperate, since Draco wasn’t smiling now and didn’t seem inclined to step away, either physically or from his demands. “Can you know that you want to spend it with me?”

“That’s why I’d like to talk to you,” Draco said. “There are possibilities for having children that I hadn’t known until I read some of the books. There are ways and ways of living with this bond, and I don’t think the one we’ve been pursuing so far is the best one.” He lowered his voice, until it was a whisper that Harry had to lean in to hear. “And my mother thinks you a better choice than Astoria. That weighs a lot with me.”

Harry shook his head with a frown. “It doesn’t change _my_ mind, or make me less willing to marry Ginny.”

“That must be nice,” Draco said.

“What must be?” Harry had already learned to be wary whenever Draco’s eyes acquired silver sparks like that.

“To never have doubts. To be utterly and absolutely sure that the woman you’ve decided to marry is the only one for you.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course I have some doubts. Sometimes.”

“You know,” Draco said, in a calm tone, “I’ve heard you refer a lot to Ginny Weasley as the woman you want to marry.”

“So? It’s true.”

“You almost never refer to her as the woman you love.”

Harry narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t think it concealed the way the bottom dropped out of his stomach, and from the way Draco narrowed his eyes back, he doubted it did for Draco, either. Draco held out an arm and let the steel of their rings shine side by side.

“This marks an alteration,” Draco said. His voice had changed again, but Harry was utterly unable to define the emotion that filled it this time. “I don’t blame you for not knowing the symbolism, or not entirely understanding it.” Harry indignantly opened his mouth to complain that he would understand if the Malfoys would just _explain_ themselves better, but Draco overrode him. “But even you know that you’re feeling more pity and understanding and anxiety for my happiness towards me than you used to. For Merlin’s sake, you were worried about what punishment I gave my father because you were worried about the effect on _me_.” Draco’s eyes met his; Draco’s hand clamped on my shoulder. “If you don’t think the same way I’m starting to about the bond, you know we should at least talk.”

That was what got to him, Harry thought later, the way Draco used _we_ instead of _I_ and _you_ in demands. He sighed and nodded, mind flickering over the guilt he’d felt about avoiding Draco last night, the way he had looked at Wilkinson’s eyes, the steel in the ring.

“All right. Fine. Just remember that you may not convince me.”

“I look forward to trying,” Draco said, with a dazzling smile, and turned around to lead the way.


	16. On the Same Couch

The room Draco led him to was yet another one Harry had never seen before, the walls a rich blue-green as though someone had wanted to create the impression of being under the sea, the couches running all along the length of the walls to leave room for an enormous sunken pit in the middle of the floor. The floor was filled with a serene pool of water, the surface marked only by large, drifting blue flowers of a kind that Harry didn’t recognize. He rolled his eyes when he first saw them. _Of course. We don’t want to ruin the color scheme of the room, after all._

Draco shut the door behind him and lit a fire in the fireplace—Harry had missed the place where the couch paused to let the hearth through—with a flick of his wand. Harry jumped, and then shook his head. Of course he should have noticed the fireplace the first time. Any room in the Malfoy house would have one.

And he was just as glad of any light that would help keep the darkness back. He moved over to stand beside the flames. 

Draco sat down on the end of the couch closest to the hearth, and extended a hand to the cushion beside him in invitation. Harry swallowed, hesitated, and then sat. His head was buzzing as if he’d had too much wine. He could feel the ring around his finger buzzing in much the same way, the energy increasing whenever Draco’s hand ventured near.

“You needn’t look as if I were going to eat you.”

Draco sounded amused. Harry shook his head and managed to raise his eyes to Draco, who lounged back on the couch as though it was the only natural way to sit. “I’m afraid of how this might change me,” he said. “If you’re persuasive enough, and I don’t have any reason to think you won’t be.”

“If I manage to change your mind,” Draco said, “that would be normal for a good teaching lesson. Or business negotiation.”

 _Oi!_ Some of Harry’s muscles tensed for a different reason, then. “So that’s what this is?” he asked. “A business negotiation?” He looked straight into Draco’s eyes and let his lips move up in a thin smile. “How interesting.”

*

_Damn. I should have remembered that he wouldn’t like to think of marriage that way, even if it is one._

It was a stupid misstep, and one that Draco knew he would need to give himself time to recover from. He backed away to the extent of staring into the fire. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” he murmured.

“Depends on what it is.”

 _Yes. He is more guarded than before._ Draco knew he had got the edge downstairs by standing close to Harry and appealing to his better nature, but Harry would be convinced he had been mistaken, now, and the whole thing was a ploy.

Which, in some senses, was true. Draco wanted Harry to at least consider the possibility of making their marriage bond sincere, and that meant he had to overcome those Gryffindor scruples that said any emotion was better than any rational decision.

“How did you know that you loved Weasley, that you wanted to marry her?” Draco tilted his head up, making sure the firelight and the shadows concealed part of his face. He wanted to hide anything that Harry might mistake as insincerity. He wanted to look vulnerable and hopeful, and he thought it might have worked when Harry paused before answering, frowning at him.

As it turned out, though, the hesitation seemed to have come from something else. “I don’t think I can describe it,” Harry muttered, and spread his hands wide. Draco watched the steel flash from the ring, taking strength from the fact that it was there at all. Harry couldn’t escape the fact that he felt _something_ for Draco, however inconvenient the fact might be for him.

“Try,” Draco insisted.

Harry frowned at him again. “Well, you must have seen something of the procedure with your parents. Or when you decided to marry Astoria.”

Draco shook his head. “Even if I had, I don’t think I can judge from those examples now, with my mother so angry at my father, and my father taking stupid risks in the name of gaining back the power of the head of the family, not caring how much he hurts my mother. And I was mistaken in Astoria. She wasn’t the sort of spouse I wanted.”

“You think _I_ would be?” Harry laughed shortly. “I can’t give you children. I can’t give you more money than I already have. I fight for all sorts of ideals that you despise, and I would have put your father in prison if I could have, even though I testified for you and your mother. We’re the least suited pair you could find in Britain, Draco. Your father knew what he was doing when he tied us together.”

“And yet,” Draco said. “We haven’t killed each other. You haven’t even tried to move out of the Manor and brought on the pain inherent in the bond because you’re so angry with me. If my father intended to make me so miserable that we would give in, he’s miscalculated.”

“That still makes me a long way from the person you should marry,” Harry said firmly. “And you’re a long way from the person I want to marry, Draco, even if you’re a much more decent bloke than I thought and even if I feel sorry for you. I’m not in love with you.”

 

“I think we could make a good marriage anyway,” Draco said.

“Why, then?”

He couldn’t be as subtle as he would have liked to be, building up to the subject of compatibility and introducing doubts about the depth of Harry’s “love” for Weasley with one stroke. But Draco still kept a pleasant expression on his face. “Because we care about each other,” he said. “Because your happiness in the marriage bond is of much greater importance to me than I thought it would be. Because of this.” He held up and turned the ring again. “What makes you so sure that we _could_ back out of this, even if we wanted to, with the bond so far advanced?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You should have talked to one of my friends. They could have told you that I don’t take negative reasons as reasons to give up. There are magical ways of challenging the bond. I haven’t advanced very far in the method I’ve decided to use yet. We could still escape.”

“Which one do you intend to use, then?” Draco blinked at him. He hadn’t thought about Harry doing research on ways to escape the bond, but he should have. Harry must have decided that he didn’t have any other options, not when Lucius wouldn’t be worked on to even consider changing the bond and letting them go.

“The one that will focus my mind on the business of my ordinary life, and keep me from being drawn too far in by the bond,” Harry said promptly. “I’m picking up new hobbies, I’m spending more time with my friends, and I’m thinking more about my job.” For a moment, he acquired a look that Draco had only seen on his face when he described his escape from the beast, but he shook it away and continued before Draco could think to ask about it. “If I keep up that focus, the way I should, then the bond can’t have the chance to change my feelings for you and pull us together the way it wants to.”

“Would it be such a terrible thing if it did?” Draco found himself thinking of Astoria, who’d also had the ability to change the topic and the angle of attack on him, but he didn’t think Harry was deliberately doing it to attack. He simply didn’t hold the same priorities that Draco did, and refused to acknowledge that some of those priorities might be admirable.

“Yes,” Harry said. “I love Ginny. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life apart from her. She’s in love with me. I don’t want to make her unhappy. And there’s really no reason for us to stay _married,_ Malfoy. Friends, maybe.”

“Don’t call me that.” Draco surprised himself with the strength and viciousness of his reaction, even if that viciousness only emerged in the softness of his voice when he spoke.

“Friend?” Harry shrugged. “I don’t have to. Maybe you’re right, maybe it would be best if we didn’t have even that much of a connection to each other.”

“Don’t call me by my last name.” Draco scooted along the couch towards Harry, which startled him enough to make him lean back, flinching as though he thought that Draco would strike him. Draco controlled himself and didn’t do that, although he would have liked to, instead hissing directly into Harry’s face. “Do you _really_ think that all those things are going to happen, that you can break the bond no matter how long you concentrate on your job and your other life? We’ve come too far. We can’t go back. We’re bound.”

“You didn’t feel that way about the platinum strand in the rings.” Harry’s eyes were wide, his breath coming fast, but his hands, clenched in his lap, didn’t show signs of yielding. “Are you only reacting like this to the steel because now there are two extra bands? Or is it something else? Because I’ve got to tell you, that you’d be willing to change your life this much, that you’d give up searching for a pure-blood wife so that you could have _me_ , doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Draco shook his head. He had to keep reminding himself that Harry didn’t feel and understand things as he did. His life would have been much easier if that was the case, but then again, they probably wouldn’t have had half the same conversations. He made sure that his voice was calm and smooth when he spoke again. “It’s the extra band, and which one it is. The steel never appears except at the judgment of the magic. It’s fairly easy to save someone else’s life. It’s hard to know when a decision or an action is of the kind that could have _changed_ someone else’s life.”

Harry laughed. “But I should be used to that, because I’ve taken a lot of actions like it,” he said. “If this is something different from the actions I undertook when I defeated Voldemort, then I wish you’d explain it to me.”

Draco gritted his teeth. Of course he would be saddled not only with a spouse who found it hard to understand pure-blood traditions and customs, but also one who was so used to performing heroic actions that he didn’t think this was anything out of the ordinary.

“You might be used to it,” he said. “I’m not.”

Harry snorted. “I testified for you. Okay, so we didn’t wear the rings then, but this isn’t the first time something like this has linked us. I even owed you life-debts before we got married, and you owed them to me. You’re acting as though the steel band should have some special, life-altering significance. I just don’t see why, because it doesn’t introduce anything new into our—relationship.” He sounded as though he had striven for a different word to describe it, and then finally settled for that one, although it wasn’t as neutral as he would have liked.

“We weren’t married then, no,” Draco said. “It makes all the difference.”

“Because of the steel,” Harry said, skeptical eyes fastened on him, “and because we’re a little friendlier to each other, you want to try staying married.”

“I’d like you to consider it, yes,” Draco said.

Harry sighed and leaned forwards, running his fingers through his hair. “You don’t really understand,” he whispered. Draco wanted to shake him, or at least proclaim that he did and thought Harry was being ridiculous, but he held his hands motionless at his sides, and after a few moments Harry began to speak again, his voice halting.

“I want so much more than just a business arrangement, Draco. I want someone I love and who loves me. I want children. I want—”

“You can have the children, at least,” Draco interrupted, unable to stay silent any longer. “I found out in the books, the books that my ancestors left but which I never bothered to read _properly_ before, that we can have almost anything we want. I could have a child outside the marriage and still rear it as a Malfoy, with magic to ensure that the adoption took. Or you could have a child and have it raised as a Malfoy.”

“And if I don’t want that?” Harry’s eyes were steady on him. “If I wanted it raised as a Potter, instead?”

Draco grimaced. The books hadn’t spoken of that, but he was sure that it was possible. It would simply mean that Harry’s child wouldn’t receive the rituals that would make it a Malfoy and therefore eligible to inherit. “As long as you wouldn’t mind me having a child of my own and rearing it as heir,” he said.

“And the love?” Harry regarded him with calm, wide eyes, looking as though he had braced himself to drive a sword into his breast and didn’t quite believe it when he realized that he had stopped short. “Can you provide that?”

“You could have all the lovers that you wanted,” Draco promised, “as long as you were discreet. We’d certainly both need lovers, if we intended to have children.”

Harry shook his head.

“But why _not_?” Draco insisted, leaning in so that he could lock their rings together. Harry twisted his arm neatly away, and Draco was forced to lift his hands, showing that he had no intention to try and touch him again. “Aren’t we good together? Can you say that you ever expected to feel as much for me as you do? If there are ways of living with this marriage bond—and there are—then why should we to force ourselves apart?”

*

A harsh laugh caught in the back of Harry’s throat, and he shook his head. For the first time since the marriage bond, he felt the emotion that he had when he watched Draco in the courtroom after his trial.

Pity. 

“You don’t _get_ it, do you?” he asked.

“Get what?” Draco was still watching his hand, as though he thought he’d have a better chance of catching Harry if he waited a bit and could take him off-guard.

“What I want in marriage,” Harry said. “What you would want in marriage, if you weren’t so focused on the idea of heirs and a business arrangement and nothing else. I don’t want an alliance. I don’t even want a friendship. I want _love._ And, Draco, that’s one thing I don’t feel for you, and I can’t feel for you, not as long as we’re this different.”

Draco cocked his head. He seemed to have run into a barrier he hadn’t known was there. “I grant you, it won’t be exactly the kind of arrangement that your parents had, or that the Weasleys have. But it’s still the best we can do with the situation as it is, I think.”

“No,” Harry said flatly. “I won’t _settle_ for something because you think we can’t do any better. I won’t get into a marriage that way, especially, when I still want to marry Ginny.” An image of her flooded him, as he’d seen her the other night, smiling at him from a chair across the table while he bounced Victoire on his knee, and he sighed. “I’m glad that I get along with you. If we can continue this—friendship, or whatever it is, until your father comes to his senses, that’s fine. But it won’t go further than that.”

Draco blinked. “I wasn’t implying that you had to fall in love with me, or have sex with me. I was just implying that you would stay married to me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I don’t separate marriage from love and sex that way, Draco. I just _don’t_. So we can try to get along, we can keep struggling against Lucius, but we aren’t going to do more than that. You might as well understand it and batter it through your skull, however thoughts get through.”

Draco only frowned at him again. “You can’t _seriously_ think that I’d give up on someone like you?”

“You might as well,” Harry said. “Unless by ‘giving up’ you mean that you’d stop having civil conversations with me. I wouldn’t like that.” He thought of the way that he’d had the impulse to go and comfort Draco last night, and shrugged. “And if you want to talk to me sometimes about what’s troubling you, you could do that.”

“Do you know how many pure-blood marriages never have _half_ of what we do?” Draco demanded. “The closeness, the trust, the shared secrets? This is the best option I have at the moment, the one I think I want to stay with.”

“You mean the one you think you probably should stay with, because you’re worried that any other pure-blood woman will reject you now that you have a husband?” 

Draco drew himself up like a snake. “It’s not about that!”

“I think it is,” Harry said. He felt a little cruel, but then again, Draco had shown himself to be thick-headed so far, not understanding Harry’s objections as if they simply weren’t real, rather than coming from a different person. Maybe cruelty would get through to him in a way that sweet reason and feelings didn’t. _He’s probably more familiar with it._ “You’re making arrangements in your head for children and being with a pure-blood woman, while still keeping the things that you like about this marriage bond. But if you had the chance to fight free of it, then I don’t think you’d keep me.”

Draco stared at him and then looked away. Harry had thrown him on the defensive, at last. So many emotions splashed and darted across his face that Harry didn’t know which one would win until he said softly, “I’ve never met anyone who can affect me like you do.”

“That isn’t a good basis for a marriage, though,” Harry said quietly. “Not the kind I want, not even the kind you want. Your parents have more than that, don’t they?”

“They never had a steel band.” Draco looked at him, then away.

“But they never had a forced marriage bond, either.” Harry stared at his ring again. The steel and the platinum bands still shone, but no matter how long he looked at them, he didn’t feel the deep, soul-changing awe of them that Draco apparently did. “I want you to have more than that, and I want _me_ to have more than that. Not to mention that I’m still in love with someone who’s decidedly not you. I’m not about to give that up for what you’re offering.”

“You still think of me as your enemy.”

Harry was startled into laughter. “Compared to the wizards who kidnapped me, and the killer I’m tracking right now, and your father?” he asked, shaking his head as Draco’s nostrils flared. “Of course not. But I do think of you as one relationship among many in my life, not the one that’s most fulfilling or the one that I want to give everything else up for.”

“Would you give up everything else for your Weasley, if she asked you to?”

“She never would,” Harry said. “Because she’s pure-blood and understands how these things work, and because she’s compassionate in her own right. But yes, I would.”

*

Draco was afraid he could identify the emotion stirring in the depths of his gut, and he didn’t like it.

Jealousy.

He shook his head. That wasn’t something he could admit to, and it wasn’t something he wanted to feel. Harry would have too much of an advantage if he didn’t care who Draco spent time or slept with but Draco cared about that with him.

“You don’t know what I’m asking for,” he said, when his voice was smooth again, “because you don’t have the context to understand it. More than an alliance, more than a friendship, not quite a love affair. A level of commitment that these rings imply and that you’ve already proven yourself willing to show. Or do you regret that you saved my life now, because of the things I’m asking you?”

Harry sighed. “It just comes down to different priorities, Draco,” he said, and there was pity in his eyes, and Draco wanted to _spit._ The only thing that kept him from doing it was that Malfoys didn’t do that. “Of course I’m glad that I saved your life, and stopped your father from hitting you with that curse. But I save a lot of people’s lives. That’s one of the reasons I chose to work as an Auror, so that I’d be able to do it more. It’s not—you’re not _unique._ Just saving you doesn’t lead me to contemplate a relationship like the one you’re talking about.”

“These rings are something you’ve never encountered before,” Draco said, and it was a struggle to hold his voice smooth this time. He hadn’t anticipated that Harry would reject him again. It hurt far more than it had when he was eleven, perhaps because they were closer now, perhaps because he understood what he was losing more than his child-self had been able to judge the friend he never had a chance to acquire. “Doesn’t that make me unique in your experience?”

“You, yes,” Harry said. “I told you, I would prefer it if we don’t go back to sniping at each other. But that’s a long way from making this relationship permanent, or even from remaining friends once the bond is gone.”

Draco stared at him. He just didn’t understand, he finally had to admit, the way Harry had accused him of doing. He had thought Harry would leap at the chance to make this permanent, because it made so much _sense._ Their bond was stable, they got along well, they had other sorts of bonds like the life-debts connecting them, there were ways for them to have what they wanted—children, other lovers, outside relationships—while still remaining part of a family and having the luxury and the safety that the Manor and the wards implied. What _else_ did Harry want? It wasn’t as though Draco had objected to him having children by Weasley or dating her. What did the marriage bond mean to him that it didn’t mean to Draco?

“I thought you wanted a family most of all,” he said.

Something sparked in Harry’s eyes. “Of course I do,” he said. “But the family should be people I love, not people I simply care for and ally with.”

“You can like me without loving me.”

“And I do.” Harry held his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to crawl into your bed or accept you as my spouse.”

“I never _asked_ for that first,” Draco pointed out.

“But marriage means that to me,” Harry countered, immovable. “And marriage also means, to me, faithfulness. I’d have split loyalties if I tried to date Ginny and stay married to you. I don’t want that.”

“But we could _live_ with that.”

“You could, and maybe whoever you picked as the mother of your children could,” Harry said. “I can’t.”

And he stood up and walked out of the room, pausing at the doorway to add over his shoulder, “Good night, Draco. If you need help with something else, like going through the list of potential brides, then I could do that, as long as you tell me enough about them that I can make an informed decision.”

Draco was left to stare into the fire and wonder what had gone wrong. Everything was desirable. The marriage bond could give them what they wanted, including a perfect way of thumbing their noses at Lucius.

But for Harry, it somehow wasn’t enough.

Draco was left with the uneasy feeling that if he tried to contend again with Harry’s prejudices and persuade him to his side, he would simply lose again.

So perhaps he ought to accept the offer Harry had just made, to help Draco find a wife who could adapt to the situation, instead of the offer that circumstances and desires and needs and everything else seemed to hold out—

Foundering on the rock of Harry’s soul.


	17. Divisions Written in Blood

“God.” Ron’s voice was low and uncertain. “I’ve never _seen_ him this bad.”

Harry smiled to himself. The smile wasn’t particularly humorous, but then again, Ron couldn’t see it; he had his back turned to speak into the Floo connection, and Harry was bent over his desk, looking at the notes that had come back from Wilkinson’s team.

_You only think that you’ve never seen me this bad because you weren’t there in the first moments after I escaped the beast._

But thinking about that escape wasn’t good for either him or anyone else in the immediate vicinity, so Harry turned his mind and his focus back to the notes. Ron continued to speak to Hermione in hushed tones. Harry didn’t mind that. A conversation he couldn’t listen in on was better for his concentration, anyway.

“No,” Ron said. “No, I don’t think so.” Then he paused and sighed. “Yes, I’ll ask him, but you know how he gets on cases like this, Hermione.”

That told Harry what would happen long before Ron shut down the Floo connection and came over to tap him on the shoulder. By then, though, he was deep in consideration of what it might mean that the blood from the Ness crime scene, as well as from the latest murder, was arranged with long fingers reaching outside the standard magical circle. They had all assumed that the formation of that kind of symbol at the last murder was an accident, that the killer had hurried through his preparations and hadn’t managed to complete them all when the Aurors attacked. But Harry was starting to think that they’d been fools, as they sometimes were. The photographs were simply too similar.

“Mate,” Ron murmured. “What do you say we get out of here and go home to have dinner? Not the Burrow, I think it’d be too noisy, but Hermione would like to see you. She might even have some insight on the case,” he added brightly, playing his best hand.

Harry smiled at him. “I appreciate it, but I need to spend some time with the Malfoys tonight.” Ron pulled a face. Harry rolled his eyes back. “Yeah, I know, but otherwise the bond will start pulling at me and probably hurt me. I can’t afford the time that I would lose when I was recovering from that.”

“You have plenty of time to eat some dinner with us and then go back to the Manor later.” Ron cocked his head as though he didn’t understand.

Harry waited a minute, but Ron didn’t back off or look away and nod, the way he would have if he was silently conceding what both of them knew to be true. That meant an argument. Harry sighed and braced himself. “Ron. You know as well as I do that I plan to stay here and keep working on the case until the last possible second before I have to go home—”

Ron cleared his throat gently.

Harry nodded. “Sorry. Until I have to go back to the Manor. I can eat here. You know that I bring along sandwiches sometimes, and I’ve got a lot better with my Preserving Charms since that time I left a cheese sandwich in your desk for a week.”

Ron snickered in spite of himself. “There was a new _lifeform_ growing on it by the time we found it, mate. Even the Unspeakables hadn’t seen anything like that before.” Then, just as Harry was hoping that he would be distracted along the happier path of amusement, he sobered up and shook his head. “You know that I can’t just leave you here, mate. Hermione would have my head.”

“I have to work on this.”

Ron leaned back on the wall, grinning at Harry slightly. Harry ground his teeth. When Ron got like that, he could argue for hours and show no sign of tiring. Harry thought it was the worst of the bad habits he had got from Hermione. “How do you know that you’re going to be the one who solves it? It could just as easily be some other Auror, don’t you think?”

“If no one works on it, then of _course_ it’s not going to get solved,” Harry said. “I want to find out who this bastard is, before he kills again.”

“But it doesn’t have to be you who finds that out.”

Harry half-closed his eyes and reminded himself that Ron was a good Auror, one of the best. If he hadn’t been, then he would have given up on the career long ago, because he had the extra problems that being the notorious Harry Potter’s partner brought along as well as the normal load of cases and nightmares from the cases, and those people who thought they could get to him because he was Harry’s friend. Not to mention what he had put up with after Harry came back from the darkness.

But that didn’t mean that he was right. Harry was also a good Auror, and he was the one who often woke up in the middle of the night with the pieces in his head connecting _just_ right, the one who would have the final insight needed to finish the case.

“I can’t,” he said. “I want to, Ron. But this—this is _deliberate._ I don’t think that what he did with that last victim was an accident. It was deliberate, the patterning of the blood, and the spells that Wilkinson and her team located at the scene—”

“They still don’t think that they identified the magical signature,” Ron interrupted, as if he had thought Harry would miss that fact in his report. 

Harry slashed his head down. “I know. I was talking about the other spells. Do you know what she must have _suffered_ as she died, Ron? I know a little of that kind of pain.” He softened his voice when he saw the way his friend was staring at him. “I promise that I won’t go off without backup, and I’ll tell you when I’m getting close to solving it. But the last time, we obeyed the rules, and we cost her her life. If we had moved faster, or at least more silently, we could have saved her.”

“And maybe got ourselves killed, too,” Ron muttered, but Harry could see that the words had shaken him. He hesitated. “I can’t work the way you do, Harry. I need my distance from the case,” he said, almost defensively.

Harry smiled gently at him. “And you think I would despise you for that?”

“I just meant that I _have_ to go home and have dinner, and not just because I’d upset Hermione if I don’t.” Ron glanced away. “I’m no good to you like this.”

Harry pressed Ron’s shoulder. “I know. Go and do what you need to do. I’ll be all right.”

“That’s what you said on the Ammar case,” Ron muttered, but he squeezed back and stepped towards the fireplace. It wasn’t everyone who got a private fireplace in their own office, but Harry had insisted on one after the darkness, both as a source of light and as a back door to escape through if the wizards who had kidnapped him came after him again. Ron picked up a pinch of Floo powder, then hesitated one more time.

“I’ll go to bed at a reasonable time, contact you if I come up with anything, and eat _all_ the sandwiches,” Harry said promptly.

Ron grinned then, although it didn’t reach his eyes, and left. Harry turned and bent over the notes once again.

Only the last part of his statement to Ron had been a lie. He wasn’t troubled by much that he saw at the crimes scenes anymore, but the thought of _eating_ when this much blood was spread around, and deliberately… 

It would have felt like mocking the victim’s last moments on this earth, and that was something Harry never did, at least not willingly or knowingly.

He fell smoothly back into the mental motions that made the most sense to him, worming out the answers and tracking them down to conclusions that the other Aurors would actually listen to. He couldn’t expect them to be in his head or his soul, and listen to the “feelings” that were often all he started with.

*

“Where is Harry, dear?”

Draco looked up swiftly from the meal of stuffed and roasted swan in front of him, opening his mouth to ask why his mother thought _he_ would know the answer to that question, if she didn’t.

Then he saw the even way she was looking at him, and shut his mouth with a little grimace. Right. She would think that he knew because she wasn’t stupid.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and he hated having to say it. “I had a talk with him last night that I hoped would clear up matters between us, and at least make him consider remaining in the marriage.” He shifted a piece of the swan’s breast around on the plate with his fork, keeping his head bowed. He also hated thinking about the feeling of helplessness that had come over him at the end of that conversation.

“Draco?”

“It’s just—he wouldn’t even consider it, Mother,” Draco whispered. “Do you think I’m that unattractive? That incapable of winning someone’s attention, of holding it?”

Narcissa laughed quietly. “Draco. That sounds similar to the whining that you did when you were a student, saying that you were stupid and would never understand Arithmancy. You either wanted me to do your homework for you or you wanted to be reassured that you were intelligent. At no time did you ever _believe_ what you said.”

Draco winced. There were disadvantages to living with someone who had known you from the time you were in nappies. He wondered if Harry ever found not having parents to be an advantage.

Then he thrust the idea impatiently aside and leaned forwards so that he could meet his mother’s eyes. “Why did Harry decide that he was incapable of staying with me, then?”

“What were his objections?” His mother leaned back with a glass of some watery, cool drink in her hand, as committed to thinking about this objectively as she was with everything else.

Draco grimaced, but he was the one who had begun the subject. “That he wanted to marry and have children, not just have children outside of marriage. That he wanted to live with someone he could love. That he didn’t feel enough for me to preserve the relationship of marriage, and that he had—that he couldn’t think of it as a business negotiation, the way that I tried to open it.”

“Those are legitimate objections,” Narcissa said.

Draco shook his head. “Then why did you send me to look up the traditions about forced marriages yesterday? I thought what you wanted me to see was that there was more than one way of having children, and that I should remember that rather than thinking that I needed to marry a pure-blood wife to make it happen.”

His mother sighed a little. “That is the first of many steps, many reasons, that might make Harry accept this bond in the end, Draco. But did you honestly think that things would be settled so easily? I grant that Harry is more reasonable on the subject of the bond than I thought to find him, but that is a long way from thinking as we do about it.”

“I tried to explain about the steel. I don’t think he got that, either. He said that he made decisions like that all the time, and that he’d saved my life so often that the platinum band didn’t impress him, either.”

His mother inclined her head, hair shining like a glacier around her. “Then you must find some other way to court him.”

“ _What_ , for God’s sake?” Draco shook his head and leaned back with his own drink. As he watched moodily, the house-elves vanished the uneaten swan—the majority of it—from his plate. “I’ve offered him everything I can think of, all I have to offer.”

Narcissa smiled at him then, and Draco caught his breath, because there was such sunlight in her smile as he had never seen before, and simply being near it warmed him. “Oh, Draco, I don’t believe that. If my son offered everything he was and had and was capable of being to any marriage partner, even Harry Potter, they would fall down for him.”

Draco couldn’t help the smile that crept over his face in return. “All right, all right,” he said. “I might have made a mistake in my choice of words. But, Mother, I honestly don’t see what else I can do.”

His mother stood up and came to his end of the table. Draco hadn’t had the chance to react and rise out of courtesy when she kissed his cheek.

“You lead the family by example,” she said. “Lead Harry to us in the same way. Act as normally as you can. Speak to him about the marriage bond when you need to. Accept his help when he wants to give it, and offer yours when it seems as if he could use it. _Show_ him that you are what he can desire.”

Draco considered. His mother was right, of course, he thought, his heart already slowing from its frustrated speed. Of course he could offer his good qualities up on a silver platter without trying; his very existence in the last few years had embodied the Malfoy family traditions, the best and strongest of them. And of course Harry would have no choice but to be drawn to him when he saw Draco like that.

Draco knew now that he would gain nothing from direct competition with Ginny Weasley, because Harry refused to judge such a competition fairly. His early prejudice in favor of the Weasleys would prejudice, as well, all the attempts that Draco might make to detach Harry from them.

No, he would be himself as hard as he could. And if that did not win Harry, then Harry was worth less than Draco had thought he was.

He looked up, about to thank his mother, and paused. Narcissa was smiling at him, of course, but there was an extra brightness in her eyes that he would have said could only really come from smugness.

“Are you all right?” he asked warily.

“Of course.” Narcissa raised an eyebrow at him, a graceful motion of the kind that had made Draco feel ashamed as a child, whether he really had done something wrong by the code his parents taught him or not. It had the same effect now. “I am speaking to my son about my son-in-law. Why would I not be?”

“Of course,” Draco repeated back, and then left the room, stifling the temptation to look over his shoulder. He could believe many things of his mother, but not that she would betray him. She always acted for the good of the family.

He returned to the library and began to work through the list of names that Harry had offered to help him choose a bride from, marking small notes beside them to divide them into categories. That would be useful both for Harry’s information about them and for Draco’s own, in case this never worked out for him.

He became absorbed in his work when he thought about doing it for its own sake, and the sharp chime of the clock from the mantle caught him by surprise. Draco leaned back and stared at it, a silver bird soaring in back-and-forth flight across a background of stars, and realized then that it was midnight.

And Harry had not come home.

*

There. There it was. It had to be.

Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The images were blurring and dancing in front of them by now; he’d spent too many hours staring at both photographs and sheets of paper covered with writing. His head hurt. He waited until the ache had stopped, and then a little more. He would make no mistakes about this.

When he looked again, though, he saw that he had been right, and clapped his hands softly in front of him. 

The blood patterns in the circle had fooled Auror Wikinson’s team, first because they had assumed the splatters were random, and second because the automatic tests they had run to see if the circles could be composed of common runes had found nothing. Neither had Harry, when he looked through the books of the well-known patterns. But he _knew_ he had seen something, and so he kept patiently, doggedly, hunting.

Now he knew. The pattern wasn’t a series of runes, and it wasn’t even one great rune, as Harry had thought. It was that last insight which had led him to the answer, but it wasn’t right in and of itself.

The circle of blood and thicker fluids, including what Ron tended to call “belly Jelly” when there was no one around to stop him, was made of two runes, superimposed over one another.

Harry smiled, though he was well-aware that the smile was more like a snarl. The first rune, the base, was the one that summoned a creature and got its attention. The second was the binding, turned just a little north of true so that it was even more difficult to recognize than simply sketching it in blood and putting in on top of the summoning rune had made it.

The summoning was for a magical creature. Harry had seen it often before. Any number of people who worked with magical creatures often carried it carved on tokens or about their necks, as extra protection against the beasts or beings they were trying to communicate with, register, or keep under control.

But the binding….

The binding was for a ghost.

That made him wonder what in the world it could mean. Did the killer intend to summon the ghost of a magical creature? To bind people’s spirits into magical creature bodies? To somehow mingle ghost and living flesh?

Harry shuddered as he thought about that last part. He could easily imagine the creatures created becoming worse than Inferi if that happened.

He rubbed his eyes and yawned. His stomach rumbled. Harry frowned and touched it for a second. Hadn’t he eaten, and just an hour or so ago? He could have sworn that he had. Perhaps he was just more hungry than usual since his mind had been working so hard.

Then he drew out the watch that Mrs. Weasley had given him for his seventeenth birthday and realized it was nearly midnight.

Harry started to his feet, the tatters of tiredness blowing away, along with his determination to figure out what the runes did before he left. How much time was it necessary to spend in the Manor tonight? He could already have started hurting Draco as the bond reacted to his absence from the family home. Sure, _he_ wasn’t feeling pain yet, but Draco seemed more devoted to the bond than he did (not to mention more committed to letting it control his life). It might affect them differently.

Harry scribbled a few notes about the runes and marked the pages in the book he’d been using where they could be found, then tossed the file on Ron’s desk and set out briskly for the lifts. He winced as he ran, wondering if Draco or Narcissa had been worried when they found out that he hadn’t come home yet. He could have sent them an owl explaining where he was, at least.

_Yes, if you had thought of it. And you’re not supposed to be thinking of it. You’re supposed to be thinking of your job, the way that you were all this afternoon. Loyalty to him is treachery to Ginny, and you know it._

Harry cursed under his breath as he jumped into the nearest lift and jabbed a button. Yes, he wanted to marry Ginny. He was more certain of that every time he thought about Draco’s complete lack of understanding that Harry wanted love in his marriage.

But that didn’t mean that he wanted to hurt Draco, either. What he _couldn’t_ live with for long was this sensation that he was caught and struggling between different actions, both of them equally valuable to different people. As he had told Draco, he could never have a spouse and a girlfriend on the side, the mother of his children. He wanted to _marry_ the mother of his children.

 _Such a mess,_ Harry thought, and hit the lift button again as he thought he felt the first faint stirring of pain in his belly.

*

Draco had done all he could, he admitted to himself. He had told the house-elves to alert him the minute they heard something from Harry. He had touched the ring and realized that it looked and felt no different from the last time he touched it, without the discreet buzzing that some of the traditions said happened if the forced spouse was in danger. He had made a resolve to cast a locator charm on Harry’s cloak the next time he went out. He had sat still for some minutes, his arms folded as he “listened” to his body, and he was sure that he felt no pain as yet, which meant the marriage bond didn’t consider that Harry had stayed away willfully from the home he shared with his husband and had to be punished.

All that, and he still felt his blood stirring with anxiety. It was with more than faint relief that he heard one of the house-elves pop into the room, and turned around.

The house-elf was Juli, and she had brought Harry with her, rather than simply waiting for him to hang his cloak up and climb the stairs. Draco could see why when he looked into Harry’s face. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin almost grey, and he looked as though someone had locked him up in a closet and beaten him.

“What’s the matter?” Draco asked, stepping delicately closer in a way that he hoped Harry wouldn’t think of as offensively concerned. “What happened?”

“I stayed late working a case and lost track of what time it was,” Harry said, ducking his head and running his hand through his hair. Draco had already noticed the different ways he had of doing that. This was the motion that urged his fringe even further over his scar and his eyes, as if he was hiding. “Sorry about that.”

Draco opened his mouth, the vicious, cold words already shaping themselves into icicles on his tongue. He could—

He could speak now, vent his real feelings, and make Harry stare up at him with defiant eyes and decide not to apologize again. Or, worse, take back _this_ apology and note that it was useless to say he was sorry.

Yes, he could do that.

Or he could show his better nature, all the things that would make him feel good about himself and potentially attract Harry at the same time.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, coming a step closer so he could wrap his arm around Harry’s shoulders and support him. Harry shifted at once so that his arm settled in a different place without shrugging it off, and Draco didn’t know why until he remembered the scars. Harry wasn’t going to let him touch them. He fought back what he could have said about _that,_ too, and continued, “I was concerned. You look much worse than you should have if you simply stayed late to work a case.”

“I got caught up in it,” Harry said, shrugging. His eyes flashed and his face closed. “It’s a bad one.”

That closing told Draco that it was better not to push. “I see,” he said. “Would you like to come to my room for a late-night snack, then?”

Harry blinked at him. “My room’s closer.”

“And more private, for you,” Draco said. He spoke softly, holding Harry’s eyes, making him come to the right conclusion himself: that Draco respected the protective spells he had put up and the need for a sanctuary of his own.

Harry cleared his throat uncertainly and looked aside, ducking his head a bit again. “All right.”

Draco smiled. This was the right way to fight a war, without the person on the other side knowing that it had begun until they found themselves surrounded and conquered.

_And if Harry never does agree to stay in the bond with me, it’s still excellent training for later in life._


	18. With the Same Goals

“I see that we once again don’t have the same definitions of the same words.”

Draco turned around from checking the protective spells on his own door and glanced at the tray that had appeared on the table next to the bed. It was laden with what looked like normal fare to him: small chocolate pastries, peanut butter biscuits, steaming mugs of a spiced drink that the house-elves never made except late at night, and a few orange-flavored scones. He lifted an eyebrow at Harry, silently asking what was wrong.

“A _snack_ is something you eat in between meals,” Harry said, and stared at the tray as if he didn’t know where to start first. He was sitting on the bed, because Draco wasn’t stupid and didn’t want him falling over and hitting his head before they’d had a chance to talk. “Not a meal in and of itself.”

“We share the same definition,” Draco murmured mildly, and walked over to take the chair on the opposite side of the table. “Only the amount of what we mean differs.”

“Right,” Harry said, rolling his eyes, but he reached for one of the biscuits. Draco concealed his smile and picked up a small scone to keep him company. He wondered if he could get Harry used to the luxuries of the Manor by stealth, feeding him sweets like this until he automatically looked around for them and showing him how coarse Weasley cooking was in comparison with Malfoy.

Then he shrugged. He couldn’t be too self-conscious about the war he was conducting, or Harry would figure it out and get upset. He moved on to other subjects.

“I have a list of the women I could ask to be my wife,” he said. “I’ve put notes on it that might help you distinguish one pure-blood girl you’ve never heard of from another. Will you do me the honor of looking at it?”

Harry paused to lick at his fingers before he answered. Draco didn’t quite manage to suppress a shudder, and pushed a napkin towards him. Harry took it, but not until after he had finished cleaning his fingers with his tongue. 

_Among the stealth training, we will need a definite course on manners,_ Draco thought.

“Yes, I’ll help you,” Harry said, and gave him an approving look. “I think you should try to find someone who fits you better than Astoria, anyway. You never seemed happy when you talked about her. What was it that made you choose her in the first place?”

“She was of the right blood, the right fortune, and made the right overtures when I contacted her,” Draco said. “It’s not as easy as you might imagine, finding a pure-blood woman who will accept someone from a family in disgrace. It helped that the Greengrasses were also suspected, although nothing was ever proven. They couldn’t afford to be too picky themselves.” He felt his shoulders fall down and his breathing even out. He blinked. _Does it help that much to speak with someone about it? I hadn’t realized.  
_  
Harry made a humming sound. “And if Voldemort had won the war? Would you have more luck finding a wife?”

“Of course,” Draco said dryly. He didn’t like thinking about that extremely unlikely possibility—or for how long it had appeared likely. “Among the Death Eater circles, and those who would have scrambled to be admitted to them, of course. But then, my father would say that those were the only people worth courting in any case.”

“Do you agree with him?” Harry looked up, and his eyes were brilliant with a light that made Draco shift in place. He didn’t know exactly whether the light burned him or stung him or enchanted him, though. “I mean, now? I know that you didn’t have much choice as a child, when you had no serious reason to question him. But now? Do you agree that marriage should be between partners of similar blood?”

“Obviously not,” Draco said, and smiled at him. “Or I wouldn’t have seriously proposed our staying together.”

Harry tensed once, then seemed to force himself to relax. “All right, I deserved that,” he said. “But I was actually thinking about me and Ginny, and what you thought of that marriage. She’s a pure-blood, even if you consider her a blood traitor. My mother was Muggleborn. She’s got some grief from a few of the pure-bloods in Gryffindor, even considering my status and that we won the war. What about you?”

Draco hesitated, but he didn’t think the guidance his mother had given him was sufficient for this situation. What _was_ one to say when one’s forced, bound husband asked a question like this? Should he go with honesty, and probably lose Harry’s impression that he was a decent bloke, or should he go with a lie and risk losing Harry’s trust if he discovered it?

Harry smiled at him, a relaxed, confident expression Draco couldn’t remember having seen on his face before. From what he said next, it was probably his interrogator’s smile. “I’m not asking you this question to trick or trap you,” he said gently. “I’m asking you to answer according to your beliefs about blood status. I want to know how much you’ve changed since the war, how much you’ve freed yourself from beliefs that you might not share and how much actually _is_ you.”

Draco spent a moment trying to feel out the bladed nuances in the words, then gave up. If he really did trust Harry the way he said he did, then he had to ignore the sense of danger growing in the back of his mind, because Harry wasn’t trying to trick him. What he wanted was what he said he wanted: to know what Draco thought.

“I think it’s dependent on the power and the status involved, then,” he said, holding Harry’s eyes. “She’s not an aspirant to the circles of society that I’m a part of, so our judgment doesn’t matter as much. And you have fame and power that ought to be good enough for anyone. Although I thought that blood was the only thing that mattered, recent…events…have shown me that my father controlled my education more than I thought he did, and more than is entirely good for my mental health, in any case. Yes, I think that you make a good match for each other in terms of sheer qualities.” _That I don’t think you love her is beside the point,_ he wanted to say, but that part, he didn’t need his mother to tell him was a bad idea. He picked up a mug from the tray and drank instead. The spiced drink inside stung his throat going down, but it tasted as lovely as ever, cinnamon mingling subtly with heated vanilla.

“Thank you.”

Draco peered at Harry. “What?” The faint smile had become a real one, and Harry was leaning forwards, his hands clasped on his knees.

“Thank you for telling me what you really think,” Harry said. “No, I mean it,” he added, when Draco’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It helps me know how honest you are, and that helps me know what kind of qualities you’ve been looking for in a wife,” he explained simply. “Plus, it is nice to know you better.”

Draco sipped some more of the drink to give himself time to respond. No one had ever made him feel as uncomfortable and as valued, within a short time, as Harry had. 

It was true; he _could_ have ignored Draco as long as he spent a minimum amount of time in the house so that the bond wouldn’t hurt them. He could have continued arguing with him. He could have decided that there was no way for Draco to change, because he was a Slytherin and a Slytherin was always evil. He could have refused to ask for Draco’s opinion on the Weasleys, because he might hear something that would make him angry.

Instead, he asked and seemed pleased with the answer. Draco didn’t know what to do with that, so he circled back to something Harry had said earlier in the conversation that he didn’t think was true.

“You said that I was a child and couldn’t help but follow my father’s ideals,” he murmured. “I don’t think that’s true. You managed to make your own decisions despite all the adults trying to influence you.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, I was a real clever and careful thinker. That’s why I noticed where and who the real villains were all the time.” He gave Draco an apologetic look. 

Draco shook his head. “I was thinking that you seemed instinctively to do the right thing. I heard the professors talk about rules as often as you did—”

“And probably broke them less.” Harry leaned forwards and took a biscuit from the tray, seeming to forget his prejudice against this much food this late at night. Draco concealed a smirk behind the mug of his drink. His evil plan to seduce Harry to his side with sweets was working, then.

“That’s not what I meant,” Draco said. “Of course you broke the rules; I don’t think you would have survived if you tried to follow them. But you broke the important rules when you needed to, and you survived dangers that would have made most of your fellow Gryffindors run away screaming. If you could do that when we were the same age, why couldn’t I? Trying to excuse it because I had parents and you didn’t is a bit odd.” He paused, as another thought struck him. “Unless the family you lived with taught you about that. Who were they, anyway? I know that you went somewhere when your parents died, but I also know that it wasn’t anywhere in the wizarding world. My father would have found you if it had been, the frantic way he was looking.”

“And what would he have done if he found me?” Harry asked, although his face had turned pale and his smile was stiff. His biscuit dangled in his hand as though he’d forgotten it. He stared at Draco intently.

Draco frowned, wondering what he’d said. “Well, probably killed you,” he admitted. “But we’ve already made it clear that I’m not my father, and that I don’t believe what I used to anyway.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Harry said. “Well, wait, yes, it is what I mean.” He took a large bite of the biscuit as if to cover his confusion, but Draco had already seen it and was trying to work out what it could mean. The questions seemed simple enough to him. Harry swallowed and went on. “Anyway, I think a lot of that comes down to individual personalities. You know, the way I would, not believing in the power of blood and all.”

 _He looked like that when I asked about his relatives,_ Draco thought. He tried to remember what he could about Harry’s family, but all he really knew was their Muggle background. He leaned forwards. “ _Did_ your relatives teach you to risk your life like that?” he asked, keeping his voice no more than mildly curious. It was an effort. “It would explain a lot about you.”

Harry snorted. “You could say that.”

Draco listened, but he couldn’t make out any emotions except impatience in Harry’s voice. Something was off here, but he still didn’t know what, and he hated not knowing what. Harry knew more about him than anyone except his parents, but Harry had more people who possessed some share in his secrets. Draco should surely have a larger share than he did.

Before he could ask a question that would make Harry reveal some of them, Harry sat up, finished the biscuit, and asked briskly, “So, where’s this list of names and notes that you wanted me to take a look at?”

Draco hesitated, but he couldn’t think of a good means to prolong the conversation, and so he stood and went to fetch the list. His heartbeat sang in his ears while he did, as though they had been doing something much more dangerous and important than simply asking each other a few idle questions.

What, though? Was it because the questions hadn’t been idle on his part, but had on Harry’s, or perhaps the other way around? Draco didn’t think the expression Harry had worn when asking about his current beliefs on blood purity was trivial.

In the end, he decided that he could not push, as he would have tried to do before his talk with his mother yesterday. He did think that he deserved to know more about Harry than he did, but they had the future for that.

 _No need to be impatient,_ he thought, as he turned around and watched Harry stifle a yawn. _Except, perhaps, that we might need to hurry so he doesn’t fall asleep in the middle of this consultation._

*

Draco had said that it would be easier and make more sense to hold the list between them while they both bent their heads over it, and they couldn’t do that on the table because his chair was lower than the bed and the food was in the way. So far, Harry agreed that that made sense.

He didn’t think that it made sense for Draco to have somehow ended up on the bed beside him, head bent next to Harry’s so that their hair practically mingled, his breath sweet from the spices in the drink as he pointed out notes and explained his reasoning to Harry. But on the other hand, that was Harry’s problem.

 _We’ll get through this,_ Harry reassured himself, and shifted his arm forwards so that his hand slid onto the bed. In the position it was in, he kept bumping Draco’s elbow whenever he shifted, and Draco’s hand kept coming near his scars, and both bothered him.

“I don’t think Delilah Moonborn would seriously entertain my suit,” Draco said, and bent closer, his free arm wrapping around Harry’s waist. Harry rolled his eyes at himself for the way he tensed. The arm was miles from his back, and if Ginny saw them like this…well, she would just have to understand, that was all. “None of the Moonborn clan or relatives, really. They’ve always held themselves aloof from politics, and managed to maintain power despite it. Even if we had been on the right side of the war, they might think us compromised by the fighting.”

Harry nodded. “All right. What about this one?” He tapped the name closest to the top of the list, which only had a single, solitary scribble beside it. Harry had already noticed that Draco didn’t have nice, neat handwriting when it came to something like this, private notes meant for his eyes alone.

_And the eyes of at least one other person. The notes are for your benefit._

Harry shivered, then told himself not to be stupid. It was no different than the way that Ron wrote notes for him on the common reports they filed. He squinted again, but still couldn’t make out the name.

“Laura d’Alveda.” Draco made a thoughtful sound. “I didn’t think much of her at first, but more and more, she’s looking like the best choice.” He took the bottom of the sheet of parchment in one hand, making it crinkle. 

“What are your objections against her?” Harry asked, and got some distance by leaning over to pick up his own mug of spiced drink. It was incredibly good, and the only bad thing about it was that it made him yawn frequently. “Not the blood thing, or you wouldn’t have put her on the list in the first place.”

“No.” Draco was silent for a moment, frowning. “I’ve met her several times now. She’s stoic enough for me, and business-like. She deals with some of the same Muggles I do,” he added, when Harry glanced at him for an explanation. “Nothing wrong with her beauty or her connections. But—well, her family doesn’t seem to _care._ They don’t have a high position that no one questions, like the Moonborns, and they didn’t fight for one, like my father did. They just drift along, making money and not caring if they interact with us or not. And yet they always seem to find husbands and wives just fine. More often in Spain than in England, that’s true, but they always come back to England to live.”

“Could she make you happy?” Harry asked. The question mattered to him even if he didn’t to Draco.

“Perhaps,” Draco said. “I think I would have to know her better first.”

Harry nodded, tried to stifle a yawn, and didn’t succeed. Draco cast him a swift glance and a faint smile, then turned back to the list. Harry told himself that was good. It would mean a lot to someone who was looking at them, like Ginny or Hermione, and prove that they weren’t getting inappropriately close.

 _Why do you always think about the way that someone looking in from the outside would see you, rather than the way_ you _do?_

Harry sighed. He was as tired as fuck, and had only agreed to talk about the list in the first place because he wanted to spend a little more time with Draco before he went to sleep. No wonder his thoughts didn’t make much sense.

“Can we arrange a meeting?” he asked. “And would you have to tell her that you were considering a marriage, or do you wait on that? I don’t know the etiquette.”

“Obviously.” Draco snorted. “Of course one tells a woman—or a man—that one’s considering a marriage. We can use deception on our political enemies and on members of our own families when there’s a good reason, but this is more in the nature of courting an ally. Laura wouldn’t trust me if I approached her under some other banner and then told her what I wanted later.”

Harry frowned and shifted his weight on the bed. Draco backed away from him, taking the list, and looked as satisfied as though Harry had helped him come to some real conclusion, instead of one he’d had in mind all along. Harry didn’t know if that was true, of course, but it would be nice to think so. “When will you start courting her?”

“The start of formal courtship is different from meeting with her,” Draco corrected, casting him a gentle, amused glance. “But I think I’ll send an owl soon. She’s a few years older than me, and her parents, as I said, show little interest in the outside world. She shows more. It will be appropriate to talk directly to her, while I did most of my negotiating for Astoria with her parents.”

“Is that because she was a woman, or because she was younger than you, or what?” Harry asked. He found himself strangely interested. On the other hand, he had once read that going without sleep for a long time could make you act drunk. That was probably the reason he felt this weird focus on Draco’s actions within himself.

“All of those, and more,” Draco said. “And because the Greengrasses are a different kind of family. The kind that moves more in our circles.” He lowered his head and looked self-satisfied, his eyes lidding. Harry knew that “our” didn’t refer to himself and Draco just then, but to the Malfoys.

He was on the outside, looking in, the way he had sometimes felt with the Dursleys when Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hugged Dudley and told him how wonderful he was while Harry sat ignored in a corner.

He shook his head. He seriously had to get some sleep. The two situations weren’t at all comparable. Draco and Narcissa weren’t trying to shut him out on purpose, while that had been one of the points the Dursleys tried to make to him _all the time_. Harry would get paranoid if he wasn’t careful, and the last thing he wanted to do was mix up one of his families with another.

_If they’re even my family._

“It just seems so weird to me,” Harry said, to distract himself from the thoughts that he would get up to if left to himself. “To negotiate with her _parents_ when she’s an adult and can make the decision for herself. To care so much about relative social standing when it’s not a forced marriage bond and that doesn’t determine how someone becomes part of the family.” Draco’s gaze rested heavily on him, just then. Harry met it and thrust out his jaw. “To treat the whole thing like a business negotiation.”

“Ah,” Draco said softly. “I think I see what’s wrong, for you. You’re thinking of this as a meeting between individuals, or a bond between individuals.”

Harry snorted. “The next thing you’re going to tell me is that every pure-blood I meet is actually the representative of a corporation.”

“Not a corporation,” Draco said, although he smiled as if he liked the metaphor. “The _family._ My actions could shame the Malfoys. The family acts through me; I act for them. And it was the same way with Astoria. She could act the way she wanted if she had no relatives, or if she didn’t care about the scandal that would come upon them because of her. But she has them, and she does. It’s the same way with me. I have to consider whether Laura d’Alveda would accept me, of course, but also whether she would accept my family, and how she would act in response to the demands of hers.”

He leaned forwards, uncomfortably close, and gazed thoughtfully at Harry from a few inches away, his hands folded beneath his chin. “You’re lucky, in a way,” he said. “You _do_ act alone, without any more Potter relatives for people to judge you as a representative of, and even if you had them, the fame you’ve achieved would eclipse anything else that people might presume to judge you for. Your position isn’t—I wouldn’t trade what I have for it, but I can envy you.”

Harry stared at him. The softness in his eyes, and the way his face shimmered around the edges, and…

And he had to look away, and think about the fact that Draco had said something about pure-bloods that actually made sense.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can see why you’d have to be careful about who you associated with, if you were thinking the whole time about the way someone else would judge your parents. Or at least your mother,” he had to add. “I mean, sorry, but I don’t think that I can really _care_ what people judge your father for at this point.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t,” Draco said easily. “He’s out of the family, so you don’t have to worry about him.” He paused. “And you can see, now, why my mother and I are concerned with you? You are part of us, for at least as long as the marriage bond lasts. So we worry about your actions and your safety and your—past.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “If you’re right and my fame’s as important as all that, then you don’t have to worry about my bringing disgrace to the family, right?”

Draco nodded. “Yes. That is why what we worry about is how you suffer and how we can help, most of all.”

Harry really did stare at him this time. Draco looked pleased beneath the attention, but also calm, and serious, and as sincere as he knew how to be.

_Okay. So pure-bloods have feelings after all. Just coming from a different place than the ones I’m used to._

“I get it,” Harry said to the blankets and his hands. “I get it now.”

As he watched, one of Draco’s hands moved into his field of vision, covering his, fingers winding around his wrist. It didn’t feel like a manacle, the way it sometimes had, like when Draco dragged him outside to see the Malfoy statues, but like a normal, gentle gesture, a sharing of touch and warmth.

“I’m glad,” Draco murmured.


	19. Hanged by the Same Rope

A harsh tapping woke Harry. He yawned and stretched against the pillow beneath his cheek, and then froze as he realized that someone was right behind him, close enough that Harry could feel breath on his shoulder. 

The emotions that swept him were so violent that he didn’t know what they were at first. His hand was on his wand, and he would turn over and cast a spell that destroyed the intruder. That was all he knew, all he had to do. His muscles started to surge, he started to turn—

And then he recognized something familiar in the pattern of the breathing, or the memories caught up with him, or the ring on his finger buzzed and jolted him out of the morning fuzziness. Harry honestly wasn’t sure which one it was. He only knew that he was in Draco’s bed, with Draco not far behind him. Draco hadn’t touched him except around the waist, hadn’t mocked his scars, hadn’t done anything but discuss the list of names with him and watch with half-lidded eyes as Harry ate.

He hadn’t even asked questions that Harry hadn’t returned tenfold, Harry remembered as he dropped his hand into his lap and ran his fingers through his hair. That—silence about important things was a gift he wasn’t used to receiving. His friends showed they loved him by surrounding him with questions and knowledge, demanding to know this or that, every little aspect of his life.

But Draco had gone quiet about the case after one question, and then—

Harry couldn’t remember what had happened next, but it had obviously led to him falling asleep in Draco’s bed instead of going back to his own room. For the second time. Harry frowned at himself and turned his head, wondering if Draco would wake up and order him out. It was what Harry wanted right now.

But Draco was still asleep, his eyes shut and his lips relaxed into an almost pouty expression. His hair was mussed in a way that caused Harry’s breath to catch in his throat, though a moment later he didn’t know why. Harry found that his hand had traveled out, and pulled it back, wincing. Draco didn’t seem to like a lot of touching from Harry unless it had to do with their hands or their rings. And he was particularly sensitive about hair, at least if the way he flinched whenever Harry ran his hands through his own was any indication.

Harry edged towards the end of the bed. Draco remained asleep, despite the tapping that repeated itself and made Harry look around now.

An owl hovered outside the nearest window, giving Harry a look that said it wasn’t used to waiting like this. Harry rolled his eyes. He recognized the barred pattern on the wings, and yes, it _was_ used to waiting like this, because Hermione always sent around messages before anyone else was up.

He opened the window, padding as quietly as he could across the floor. He still wore his trousers and pants, but he didn’t remember removing his shirt. He had to if he’d fallen asleep, of course. He could no longer bear the touch of cloth on his scars. But it was curious that he couldn’t remember when he’d done it.

_Perhaps Draco did it for you._

That made Harry’s face burn more, not so much for what it would mean if Draco had touched him like that—he had touched Harry’s back before, when he helped take care of the suppurating scars—as for what it would make Ginny and Hermione and the rest of his friends think. Ginny’s hurt expression floated in his mind, along with Ron’s angry one and Hermione’s weary, knowing look. She would be the worst of all, since she would nod and say that of course Harry couldn’t fight the marriage bond if he wouldn’t hold true to the best way of magically challenging it that they had found.

Then he shook his head, because Mercury, Hermione’s owl, was right in front of him, and he was quite insistent on having his message taken. Harry took it so that he wouldn’t wake Draco, and then managed to scrounge part of one of the uneaten sandwiches from the pocket of his Auror robes, which were hung over the back of a chair. Mercury hooted once and soared out the window, devouring the sandwich as he flew.

Harry was left blinking. He reckoned that Hermione didn’t expect a response, then, which was unlike her. He shrugged, gave another glance over his shoulder to make sure that Draco didn’t wake up, and then opened the letter.

It was short and to the point.

_Harry, I really don’t think you can break the marriage bond if you keep depending on the Malfoys for help this way. Ron said that you wouldn’t come over last night and why, but I went to your office after midnight and you were gone. That means that you must have gone back to the Manor. I know that you need to spend a certain amount of time there so the bond doesn’t react, but you also really needed friends around last night. If you went to Malfoy for soothing instead, I’m afraid of what might happen._

Harry felt his face burn. Hermione knew him way too well. Yes, he would have liked to talk with his friends last night, but he couldn’t leave the case—

_Does that mean you immediately had to fall in to talking with Draco when you came back here? You could have called Juli so you could eat something and then went to bed._

And then Harry paused and blinked, because he hadn’t talked about the case to Draco. And he hadn’t had the chance to ask Juli for food and to be left alone before she grabbed his hand and brought him to Draco. So all the things he’d been chiding himself for weren’t—weren’t _real,_ actually. Or at least they weren’t real in the same way that Hermione was imagining them. Harry didn’t think she would say sleeping beside Draco and letting himself be so vulnerable that he couldn’t remember Draco removing his shirt was a good idea, either.

Harry bowed his head. The faces of his friends circled through his mind again, and he drew a deep, painful breath.

It was still true that he didn’t love Draco. It was still true that he didn’t want to stay in the marriage bond with him; he wanted to marry Ginny and have a family with her. It was still true that he valued his friends and wanted to keep those friendships alive, not simply vanish into the Malfoy family as if he had never been anywhere else.

But it was also true that he couldn’t hurt Draco for the sake of not hurting his friends. Ron was mature enough now not to hate and resent Draco the way he had in the past. Hermione made accurate guesses, but not _that_ accurate. She didn’t know exactly what kind of company and rest Harry had needed last night. Draco, incredibly, had.

And Ginny was stronger than Ron gave her credit for, than Harry gave her credit for. She could put up with Harry getting close to Draco when it wasn’t remotely the same kind of relationship that _she_ had with Harry. Above all else, she was compassionate; Harry could still remember the way she had helped tend to the wounded after the Battle of Hogwarts and flinched when she looked at those injuries, but never let that interfere with the steady motion of her hands as she flicked her wand or tied bandages. She was so much braver and had more integrity than they thought, his Ginny.

He had two lives now. Two families. If the method of magically challenging the bond that Hermione had found required him to hurt Draco by separating himself from him, then Harry couldn’t do it. He would have to write back to her and explain that, then ask her to tell him about one of the other methods.

He glanced over his shoulder, and jumped when he realized that Draco’s eyes were open, and sleepily fastened on him. “Good morning,” Draco said, arching his head back and stretching his arms as if he were working out the kinks that might have mysteriously popped up in them while he was sleeping. “Did you want some breakfast?”

That made Harry look up to check the time on the clock; somehow, that hadn’t been the first thing that occurred to him when he woke up, although it should have because he had no idea how long he’d slept. He swore when he realized that it was almost nine. “I have to go to work,” he said, and turned around to pick up his shirt.

“No, you don’t,” Draco said, and there was the sound of him edging across the bed.

“Yeah, I kind of do,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. He could feel affection for Draco without thinking he was perfect, and those words had reminded him of all the many, many things that Draco didn’t understand, like working for a living. “I left notes about the runes drawn in blood that they’ll want explained. I tried to write down as much as I could, but I was worried about getting back here before the pain of the bond started.”

“Were you?” And Draco was standing behind him, not touching him, just watching him. Harry shivered, a bit wary of how _not_ wary he was feeling. It was like it was perfectly all right for Draco to stand there, and not even the instincts he had acquired in the darkness would protest. “That was sweet of you, to worry about me.”

“Of course I do,” Harry said, turning around and shaking his head. “We disagree, but the way you described the pain of the bond…no one deserves that.”

Draco gave him a sleepy smile. He still hadn’t fixed his hair. “Come to breakfast,” he said. “Mother will ensure that it’s ready.”

“I have to go to _work_ ,” Harry explained, and slid the shirt over his head.

“You’re going to wear the same shirt two days in a row?” Draco sounded more horrified than Harry had ever heard him sound about anything, excluding perhaps the time Lucius was in Azkaban. He pulled hard at Harry’s shirt collar; it took an effort for Harry to keep his hands at his sides so that he wouldn’t swat. Draco hadn’t actually touched the scars, but it had been close. “Disgusting.”

“Sometimes,” Harry said, turning around and adopting both a solemn expression and tone of voice, “on cases where I’m in the field or in disguise for a long time, I wear the same robes for a _week_ in a row.”

Draco’s nose wrinkled. “All those _Daily Prophet_ articles that said you were mad seemed to have no basis in reality. Now I know they do.”

Harry laughed and punched him in the shoulder. Draco reached up and caught his hand briefly, pressing the ring. “Fine,” he said. “If you have to go, go. But promise me that you’ll get something to eat.”

“Sandwiches in the office,” Harry said. “And I promise that I’ll remember to eat more of them this time than I did last night. Although, really, I’ve been eating more and better ever since I came here. If I don’t watch out, then I might start getting decadent. And no one wants that.”

Draco’s eyes glinted at him. “Define ‘no one.’”

Harry laughed. “What, you need a dictionary for simple words now?” And he cast a spell that would smooth some of the wrinkles out of his shirt and took a run for the door, trying not to think of the showers that opened off his bedroom or the gracious breakfast that doubtless _was_ spread out over the dining room table below, fluffy scones and delicate white chocolate biscuits and steaming tea and—

 _You’re bad at keeping your mind where it belongs,_ Harry thought in irritation with himself, and pictured the runes in blood. That effectively brought his thoughts back to work and killed his appetite, and he Apparated the moment he was beyond the Manor wards.

*

Draco stretched out a hand in a shrug to an invisible audience. _I tried to keep him here. I did my best._

But he had to admit, the triumph of last night, when he had watched Harry’s head sag in drowsiness, his eyelids flutter shut, and his muscles remain limp and smooth and quiet when Draco removed his shirt, was still too much with him to make him care that he’d lost this argument with Harry about going to work.

Draco rose and dressed more fully, shaking his head when his usual breakfast appeared. “Tell Mother that I’ll join her in the dining room,” he said, and the elves bowed and vanished, taking the food away. Draco wondered for a moment where the food went, if the elves ate it or made it into something else or simply banished it from existence.

Then he snorted. That was the kind of thought he never used to have before Harry came into his life, and it wasn’t the kind of thought that he _needed,_ now.

He and his mother made light conversation while they ate, and Draco knew he wasn’t imagining the way her eyes shone when she looked at him, or the way her lashes lowered when he tried to catch her out in the stare. Well, if it was a triumph for Draco, it was also a triumph for her. He wouldn’t have tried to handle Harry with that kind of gentleness at all if not for her advice.

Harry trusted him enough to sleep beside him. He helped Draco without more than a request on Draco’s part, without needing the strenuous bribes that even Draco’s friends sometimes did. He asked him questions because he genuinely wanted to understand what Draco believed about such matters as the Dark Lord’s politics. What Draco thought mattered to him.

Of course, Draco would also need to write a letter to Laura d’Alveda, and he knew that the marriage bond with Harry might not work out the way he wanted it to, even after everything he’d tried, even after it all. But he would accept what he had for right now, and work his way forwards. As he had told himself before, winning Harry was something he wanted to do, but it certainly wasn’t the only application of his mother’s advice.

He was whistling when he Apparated to the first business meeting of the day, carefully balancing Malfoy control of a Muggle firm.

*

“Well done, Auror Potter.” Wilkinson kept her head bowed as she worked, her fingers flying over the notes that Harry had prepared and starting to draw up a chart. “We’ll work on possible complications and combinations of these runes, and get an answer much faster than we would have otherwise.”

Ron grinned at him, and punched him on the shoulder. Harry punched back. They were sitting in one of the rooms that the Ministry usually kept to entertain visiting dignitaries, because it was the only one nearby big enough for all the Aurors who had been called in to work on the Ness case. Ron and Harry, as well as Wilkinson’s team, had chairs at the largest table, with the original photographs and Harry’s notes on the runes. The others worked with copies all around the room, silent and intent.

Harry felt his happiness fade as he picked up the photograph of the latest scene and stared at it again. Yeah, sure, he had figured something out—the first step. That didn’t mean they knew who the killer was yet, or when he would strike again, or even what he wanted.

His mouth setting hard and cold, Harry put the photograph down and leaned back over his notes. There was a question he’d meant to ask Wilkinson, he knew. He’d got distracted from it last night as he labored over the runes and the secrets contained in them, but he did want to know what in the hell—

Ah, yes. There.

“How many different scents would you say were at the scene, Auror Wilkinson?” he asked aloud.

Wilkinson took a moment to lift her head from the papers she was studying, a state of intense concentration that Harry knew well. When she heard what he was saying, her own mouth set. “The scent of blood was the most intense, of course, Auror Potter,” she said.

Harry nodded. “But anything else under that?”

Wilkinson frowned. “We did not bring in hounds that could sort through the different smells, and we cleaned the scene up when we had finished inspecting it.”

“Anything at all,” Harry said, and then sighed. He didn’t want to prejudice their conclusions, but he had to know. “Do you recall, or does anyone on your team recall, smelling something like decay? Rotting fruit? Rotting greenery?”

Wilkinson shook her head, but one of the young women behind her sat up and stared at Harry as though he had pricked her with a needle. Harry felt his chest tighten. Ron leaned in behind him, offering protective shelter. Harry resisted the urge to sit back against him and instead smiled at the woman, who was probably just out of training if her age was anything to go by. “What did you smell?”

The woman glanced once at Wilkinson, then whispered, “Fruit. It smelled like—crushed apples. My parents lived next to an orchard. I know that I’m never going to forget that smell.”

Harry nodded, and it was an effort to keep his smile up. But he did, because letting someone this young know that the Great Auror Harry Potter was frightened could only be a bad idea. “Thank you, Auror—”

This time, the way the young woman flushed was apparently out of gratitude that he cared enough to ask her name. “Perry, sir.”

“Thank you, Auror Perry.” Harry turned back to his own notes and glanced at Ron. Ron was gazing at him, calm and steady, but with his freckles standing out against pale skin. Harry made a little motion, and Ron rose and followed him out of the room. After three years of training and three years of regular work together as partners, they knew each other too well to miss a signal like that.

Ron slammed a fist into the wall of the corridor the moment he thought they were beyond the ears of the others. “ _Damn_ it,” he said. “You think they were there to send a message of some sort to you, mate?”

Harry shook his head. “No, although they probably knew that I would be one of the Aurors investigating the case. Those runes…I think they’re trying to resurrect the beast that they wanted to sacrifice me to, Ron. Or at least summon another one like it. I never did determine what kind it was, whether they’d bred it or called it from somewhere else or what.” He did his best to tamp down on a shiver. He wouldn’t get hysterical in front of Ron. Ron had enough to worry about without that.

Ron swore again. “Do you think—do you think that you ought to get off this case, then?” he asked, eyes dark as he took a step towards Harry. “Back away before they try to grab you again?”

“Of course not,” Harry snapped, a little surprised that Ron would suggest it. “Those victims they might grab, and that I might be able to help, are a lot more important than my peace of mind.”

“Not to me.”

Harry gave a little wince. They didn’t often talk about their friendship, about the way that they thought of each other. After so many years, it was just _there,_ deep and enduring, and Harry knew that Ron could depend on him for everything he needed and that he could likewise depend on Ron. But he had always taken it for granted that there were things that mattered more to Ron, like Hermione and his family and his duty as an Auror, fighting Dark wizards and protecting the innocent.

Now, to watch Ron staring at him like that…Harry turned away, scratching the back of his neck. He snatched his hand back before he could start scratching the scars, though. He had done that once, right after he’d returned. It wasn’t a good idea.

“No,” he said quietly. “I might let them know that something is wrong if I get off this case. We can’t let them know what we’ve figured out.”

Ron nodded. “That’s not going to be difficult,” he murmured. Harry nodded back. There were some good consequences, beyond preventing a general panic, of the Ministry’s decision to keep the news of his disappearance quiet. “All right. But I want you to come and talk to me the moment something changes, all right? I want to be sure that you’re safe— _Harry!_ ”

Harry whirled. There were reaching green tendrils everywhere around him, and if there had been a wizard to cast them, their shape was absolutely hidden in the jungle they’d summoned. Harry dived to the floor and reached for his wand.

He was too late. One tendril snatched his wand away from him, one wrapped around his waist, and he felt the tug of a Portkey. Ron was shouting behind him, but the sound of his voice was already fading.

Then Harry lost everything to the darkness that closed in on him as he landed with a bump on stone. He took a wild glance around the room. No windows, no fires, no lamps on the walls, no torches, no fairy lights.

No _light._

The scream that welled out of his throat in the next moment barely sounded human.

*

Draco knew better than to reveal that he was awake. Whatever had snatched him had done it the moment he stepped out of his meeting for a little light lunch. He’d had time to smell decay, and then someone had struck him on the skull. He’d become woozy, but not dropped unconscious, and so he’d felt himself slung over a shoulder, his wand taken, and the snap and crack of someone Apparating.

The captor had landed among other captors. The one carrying him laid him down, but didn’t try to bind him, which meant Draco didn’t have to risk moving yet. He sniffed up more decay, and remained still, listening.

“I’m sure it will work this time,” someone was insisting, in shrill tones that would have made Draco mark him down as a person who was never to be trusted with important secrets of any kind.

“That’s what you said last time, too.” This voice was an older woman’s, Draco thought, weary and with a husky rasp to it as if she had spent long years smoking. “And what you said the time before that, when we actually _had_ Potter and then managed to lose him and everything we’d accomplished up to that point.”

 _Harry_. Draco had to keep his finger from rubbing along the marriage ring. He hadn’t realized how often he’d taken to caressing the symbol of his forced bond when he thought of Harry.

“Simeon was a fool.” A third wizard, and his voice seemed to emerge from deep in his chest. Draco estimated him as the one standing closest, and thus probably the one who had brought Draco here in the first place. “He lost his life because of it. If we are careful, then we can achieve that which we strove for in the first place.”

“Very well.” Although Draco didn’t dare open his eyes, he could imagine perfectly the long-suffering swipe that the woman would make at the air. “Fine. But you’re in charge of guarding him this time, and making sure that we manage to _subdue_ him, not simply take him captive and then let him kill us.”

Draco thought that one of the two wizards started to make a response. He listened eagerly. He was close to being able to use the echoes of their voices to estimate the size of the room.

Piercing screams, inhuman in their intensity, sounded from not far away. Draco couldn’t keep himself from jerking in surprise, but from the inhalations around him and the way that robes rustled, he thought all his captors had turned to face the sound and hadn’t noticed him move.

Draco opened his eyes.

He was looking down a narrow aisle between long stone seats that might have been benches from Hogwarts’s Great Hall. The room was lit only by torches on the walls, and looked to be made entirely of rock. At the far end, in the direction Draco was staring, an open doorway stood, leading only into darkness.

From there, the screams came.

Draco jerked like a fish on a line as he realized what they must be. _Harry. They put him in darkness, and left him there. Mother did say that he had to have light to sleep._

He started to summon his wand to him. He had practiced enough wandless magic to do that, and—

And then the darkness reached out ropy red and black tendrils in his direction, and the wizards in front of him began to _melt_ , and everything went to hell.


	20. Spinning in the Same Darkness

It was happening again, what had happened when he escaped from the darkened house where the beast had fed on him, what had happened when he could no longer stand it and knew it was escape or die.

Harry screamed and tried to hold it in, the force of his own magic, but it was impossible. It twisted out of him, borne by the screams, taunted by the smell of decay. If he didn’t strike out at something, he was going to die, going to drown, going to choke. His pulse hammered in his throat, and his mind warped and bent, gently, and he could hear his breath through ears that seemed to bleed.

He had no idea if they were actually bleeding. He had no idea if his wounds had opened again. He had no idea if anyone else was in the building with him and might be harmed by the ropes that he knew he was creating. He was whimpering, and he was screaming, and it was high and mindless. He knew that when he knew anything at all.

The darkness.

It was there, sliding around him like heavy oil, like muffled velvet, stretching and hitting him and taunting him and it _hurt_ and he no longer cared about the damage that he was doing because it was there, it was _there,_ there was no holding back, it was coming out of him, he was shredding and spinning apart and—

There was pain.

Of course, there was pain wherever the darkness was, but this felt like something new, something new. Harry shuddered and opened his eyes, although he didn’t know why he thought he would be able to see anything with the pit around him. 

The pit, the house with its walls that never moved and the beast that returned and the food and drink that spared him when he wanted to die and the feces he sat in because the beast’s suckers held him still, he had sat in the same place for three months, the Healers said he wouldn’t have relearned how to walk again so fast except that his magic was surrounding him and driving him on to erase any reminders of that place he could, the pit—

There was pain.

It came from his finger. Strange to remember that he had fingers when so much of him was dissolving and pouring out of him, but Harry opened his eyes and looked down, and now he could make out the ring of light that shone there, painful and pure and hurtful. He reached down, and it stung his other fingers. The light spread, from the platinum and the steel and the silver and the gold and the copper, filling the darkness with a radiance as multicolored as they were.

Harry shivered, and he remembered the forced marriage bond and the way that Draco had touched him that morning—was it only that morning?—and the way he had fallen asleep beside him, and it reminded him that other things existed in a world as battered and grieving as this one was. He could breathe again, and the wild beat of his heart slowed. He turned his head and was able to see a far wall in the light.

And he could see what he had tried so hard to forget, what he had taken into him, made a part of him, and then used to escape.

Waving red-black tendrils extended across the room. They extended from the wounds on his back, writhing and slipping back and forth. They were looking for something to feed on.

The truth struck across his mind, no longer held at bay by the barriers he could raise against it:

At the end, his magic had risen from the scars that the beast had carved into his back and eaten _it,_ consumed the darkness, swallowed its strength. He had been afraid, ever since, that he would lose control of his magic during a flashback and eat anyone else he was near.

And from the sound of the screams, he was near someone.

Harry wrapped his arms around his head and closed his eyes. The burning pain of the ring sent more and more swords of light into his mind, and his magic and his memories alike wavered, as the pain of that eating and the horror of what he had probably already done whirled down on him.

He didn’t think he could stop. The light from the ring was dying, and soon he would be in darkness again, and the madness pressed closer, rubbing against him like a cat waiting to be petted.

He tried again to think about it, to think about what he had done there and what he had probably done here and what he would do. His mind stood in front of it, then shivered, and then shattered.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thought, to whoever might have come along to hear it, as more and more memories soared up to join him. _I’m so sorry, but this time, it’s too much. I’m going to collapse this time, and no one can stop me or save me. No one can heal me. Maybe no one ever could. I’m too far gone—_

Once again, the pain of the ring hit him, but this time it felt like something trying to gnaw his finger off. Harry flinched, hissing, and some sanity climbed back to the forefront of his mind and shook him.

_It wouldn’t hurt like that if it was only the marriage bond being upset that I was going to die. It hasn’t hurt like that when I was close to the cases or when I drove myself to exhaustion. It would only act like that—_

_If I was about to hurt someone else from the family with my magic. If Draco is here._

Harry groaned. He wanted to weep. He wanted to say that he was too tired, that living with the memories and the scars had been hard enough, that last time he had only cut himself off from hurting Draco with a Shield Charm and that the pain and panic that drove his magic, the desire, the _need_ to be rid of whatever was hurting him this time, the people who had dumped him in the darkness, was stronger than the marriage bond.

But he had the ring on his finger. And the ring had brought back light, and that had brought back a bit of sanity, and that meant that he couldn’t simply lie down and ignore, or pretend that he was ignoring, the consequences of his actions.

He hadn’t died in the darkness before. He hadn’t died this time. And it was possible that if he didn’t react, if he didn’t reach out and try to pull back in the reaching tendrils from his back that were the remnants of the beast’s suckers, its power added to his own, then Draco would die.

Still groaning, still weeping, he reached out and began the impossibly long climb from darkness and madness back to sanity and light.

*

Draco hadn’t died in the first astonished moments of the tendrils’ attack because he had realized what they were, or at least that they were causing his captors to melt, and so he had rolled away from them, back down and under the stone benches that lined the aisle. The stupid wizards in front of him had tried to fight them.

They couldn’t. The suckers pulled, and their faces warped and floated into reaching lines of color, eyes and cheeks and teeth and lips. They raised their wands, and the tendrils snatched them and whipped them away. The suckers settled into place on their necks when their faces had finished melting, and continued to draw, to drink. Draco thought he saw cracks open down their backs like the grey scars that littered Harry’s in the minute before they turned too liquid to have surfaces that would crack.

Two of the tendrils curled towards him. From behind, Draco thought he saw them lit by light that wasn’t that of the torches on the walls, glowing metallic light, and he wondered what it was.

But he had no time to find out. He did the only thing that made sense at the moment, and thrust his left hand with the marriage ring on it towards them.

The metallic light that shone behind the suckers blazed as bright as a fallen star. The tendrils coiled back on themselves and floated there. Draco stared. What he had assumed were simple suckers on the end of the tendrils now revealed themselves as faces, with opening and closing mouths and slowly blinking eyes. Draco felt his stomach heave and managed to clamp his teeth shut just in time. He was _not_ going to embarrass himself by vomiting all over the floor, and besides, the momentary distraction that that would cause him would probably also cause his death.

The light behind the suckers went out, briefly. Draco saw one of the tendrils lash towards him, and he pulled his arms and legs in and rolled again. The stone bench struck the back of his head, and he gritted his teeth, sucking hard at the space between them. When he bit down on his tongue, the pain jolted him back to reality.

The radiance was there again when he opened his eyes, brighter than before. This time, there could be no doubt of it: the tendrils were slowly falling to the floor and turning away from him. Draco thought he could hear faint cries of pain from the faces on the ends of them. He closed his eyes until he could banish the thought, because it was the sort of thing that he might go mad if he spent too much time contemplating.

Then he remembered the other thing he had almost forgotten in the rush of trying to get out of the tentacles’ reach. _Harry._

Draco stood up, banged his head on the bench above him again, swore, and then crawled out and resumed his feet. When he looked at the floor where his captors stood, he saw no trace of them save a few anonymous brownish-red stains. He shuddered and faced the dark, open doorway. A shadow showed him the last of the tendrils retreating around the corner of it. He would have to go after them.

Into the darkness.

The darkness lit by softly-glowing light, the darkness where Harry was. 

Draco rubbed the softly buzzing ring on his finger, summoned his wand, and followed the tendrils.

*

It had been the hardest thing Harry had ever done in his life. But he had pulled the tendrils back, and the ring on his finger had stopped sending little radiating shocks of pain up his arm, so he reckoned that he hadn’t harmed Draco.

Now he concentrated on wrapping deep layers of a Shield Charm around himself, again and again. His magic had no trouble doing such a thing; it hummed and bounced through his veins with eager strength. He knew why. If he had not devoured Draco, there had still been other people there, perhaps the wizards who had used the decay magic, and he had eaten _them._

The level of disgust with himself in his stomach made him wish that he could simply close his eyes and not wake up.

But he couldn’t do that. Draco was still here somewhere, and Harry didn’t know how long his control over himself would last, particularly because the memories of what he had done before and what he had just done were pressing in on him, telling him that he was a monster, that—

His magic would come out again, because the memories would seem like reality and he had to have it to defend himself against threats, or because he was doing the best he could to reject the swallowed power and destroy himself. Hence the Shield Charm. A layer of it above his body would at least make it so that he was no threat to anyone else, and that should give Draco time to go for help.

“Harry.”

Harry flinched in shock at the voice, and the Shield Charm collapsed into nothingness. The one thing he had not anticipated was that Draco would be mad enough to come into the room after him.

“Merlin, what happened to you?” Draco knelt down next to him. His wand shone with a _Lumos_ charm, and his ring blazed in answer to Harry’s. The glow faded as he started to reach out, and Harry flinched again, imagining that they would be left in darkness. He knew what would happen after that.

 _No,_ he told himself firmly. _Draco still has the light on his wand, and he would never let it fade from sight completely so that you would be hurt. He would never do that to you. Do you remember the way he let you rest beside him and didn’t try to touch your scars? Maybe he doesn’t understand how serious everything is in your life, but he understands most of it. Let him do this._

It took all of Harry’s strength to stay still so that Draco’s hand could rest on his arm, no matter how often he told himself that he wasn’t in danger of losing control right now, with the light. He knew that he had _nearly_ consumed Draco, and the moment that thought came into his mind, he turned his face away in disgust.

“Did you notice the rings?” Draco’s voice was hushed. His fingers ran lightly up and down Harry’s arm, as though he thought the touches would help Harry to focus his mind on something that wasn’t the darkness. Potentially true, Harry thought, huddling and shivering into himself, if only Draco had any idea of how much else he was dealing with.

_So tell him._

But the only thing Harry feared more right now than losing Draco’s regard was the darkness. And Draco’s regard for him would fade, be changed and distorted, if he learned that Harry was the only monster here.

Draco had asked a question, Harry realized abruptly. He was waiting for an answer. He cleared his throat. “I—yeah,” he said, clearing his throat again, because the first word had sounded so horrible it would reveal his monstrous nature to Draco all on its own. “That was what told me that you could be in danger, when they started glowing.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Harry blinked. Draco’s voice sounded the same as it always had, except softer. He looked around, almost expecting to find them back in his bedroom at Malfoy Manor—or Draco’s bedroom, really, since that was the one they had spent the most time in. “What do you mean?” he asked, when only solid walls and pressing darkness met his glance.

 _The darkness—_ A scream kicked the back of his throat, and Harry shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. No. He wasn’t going to give in. 

“You moved away,” Draco said, and this time he slung an arm around Harry’s shoulders. Harry ducked his head and got free before he could stop himself. It was an instinctive, unthinking reaction, but he couldn’t, he just _couldn’t,_ stay like that under Draco’s touch, not when his arm was resting so close to the scars. Draco sighed at him and held out his hands, as if begging Harry to observe that he didn’t have anything in them. “I want us to face this together,” he said, slowly and clearly. “And I want you to look at the rings.”

Harry turned his head. The glow from the rings had settled down to a steady, dim shine like that which came out of oil lamps. At least it reassured him that he wouldn’t be left alone with the darkness. That was a good thing. That was a thing he needed.

And—

Harry stared. He was used to the three metals that had formed the ring when he got it shoved onto his finger by the magic of the marriage bond, gold and silver and copper. And he had accepted that the platinum and steel were there to stay, that he wouldn’t remove them by ignoring Draco or focusing his thoughts on other things. But the band of shimmering bronze among them was new.

“Do you know what the bronze means?” Draco’s voice was low and intimate, but he didn’t try to touch the scars on Harry’s back again. He leaned forwards and rested on his heels next to Harry, instead, holding out his hand so that they could study the rings and the bronze in them side-by-side. “It’s one of those metals that doesn’t appear often. I have no idea how it acquired the meaning it has, but I know what pure-bloods say about it now. Sanity is a candle, easily snuffed out. Bronze has the most colors of fire, especially when you twist it.” He turned his hand around, and the light followed and flowed into the bronze. “So. You’ve saved my sanity, Harry.” He looked up, and his eyes had their own, slight glow, something Harry almost thought he could have followed out of the room if magic had ceased to exist in that moment. “And you’re mad if you think that I’m going to let you shut yourself away, or commit suicide out of guilt, or whatever it was that you were imagining doing.”

Harry took one deep breath, and then another. There was something wrong with what Draco was saying, something he had to combat, but for a moment, the comfort of Draco’s words wrapping around him acted like a Memory Charm on everything else. He was—it was _nice,_ to think that Draco cared for him enough to speak like that.

And then he remembered.

“I was the one who endangered your sanity in the first place,” he whispered miserably, ducking his head so that he could escape Draco’s lambent gaze. He had to keep his eyes open, because at the moment even the minor darkness caused by closing them was beyond his ability to face, but he didn’t deserve to meet the shine Draco was showing him. “You shouldn’t even come near me. You should want to stay as far away as you possibly can—”

“You might be right,” Draco said.

Harry winced, because the loss of hope was a savage thing, but he managed to nod. He had to think of Draco’s safety before his own. His own—didn’t matter much, not when he could cause chaos and calamities like this. “I’ll move out of Malfoy Manor as soon as I can.”

Draco laughed, and there was a catch in his voice when it should have been free and joyous. Harry didn’t understand that part. “You can’t,” he said. “The marriage bond binds us tighter than ever, with the addition of the bronze. What you _can_ do is let me know what happened, so that if something like it happens again, I can understand it and act to protect you. And myself,” he added, when Harry kept an unyielding stare on him.

Harry thought he could tell it in simple words. Become more complicated than that, and he knew that he would collapse, screaming, and that would be the end. He might as well give up right now and let the darkness have him.

He turned so that Draco could see the grey scars, and the black and red lights that were probably flickering in them, _moving_ in them. Harry had seen them sometimes himself, during the rare occasions that he dared to stand with his back bare in front of a mirror. “I ate the creature. I dissolved it with my magic and pulled it into the scars. Then I did the same thing to the wizards who attacked us. And I nearly did the same thing to you.” His hands were shaking, he saw then. Only by that did he realize how much he hated himself for letting that happen. He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”

*

Draco wanted to say something, but he checked himself, because he knew that almost any words would be the wrong ones to give Harry right now. He slowed down, half-closed his eyes, and waited in silence until some of the more hasty and worrying impulses faded. 

Harry’s shaking hands and the way he kept shying away, even the sight of the grey scars, hit and hurt Draco on a level that he hadn’t known existed in himself. He wanted to touch Harry. He didn’t want to touch Harry. His throat was dry with fear. His head was heavy with pity.

He did know one thing, though, he thought, glancing down at the bronze in the rings. This was the sign of a bond running so deep that he wouldn’t be surprised if it could no longer be severed, whatever their wishes. He used that to orient himself, to think past the shock of the moment and to absorb Harry’s words.

“You almost did the same thing to me,” he said. “You didn’t.”

“The marriage bond stopped me.” Harry’s voice was soft and ugly. With hatred, Draco knew, and knew at the same time that the hatred wasn’t directed against him. That left a shortage of acceptable targets. “I didn’t manage to do it on my own.”

Draco shook his head. “Why should it matter to me why you stopped?” He shuffled closer on his knees, reached out, and then decided that it would be better to warn Harry rather than simply clapping his hands down. “Will you let me touch your scars?”

Harry whipped his head around to stare at him, eyes wild. “Why would you want to? They nearly ate you! I nearly ate you!”

“Will you let me?” Draco repeated. He didn’t know if he could answer the question of why he wanted to, but Harry’s permission, and what it would mean if he gave that permission, was more important than his desire, any way he looked at it.

Harry locked all his muscles. “I don’t know what will happen if you touch them,” he whispered. “They could eat you. No one—no one touched them this soon after the time I ate the beast to escape.”

“Then I’ll touch near them,” Draco said. “Will you let me?”

He would have missed Harry’s nod if he hadn’t been so focused on every slight motion of his head. As it was, he waited a moment longer to be sure that he really had the permission to make this important gesture.

And then Harry pressed backwards, and Draco’s hands touched the unbroken skin between the scars.

Draco was breathless with the danger of it, with the shadows that he could indeed see moving in the channels of grey flesh—but not reaching out for him, it seemed Harry’s fears were unfounded—and most of all with the trust that Harry had just showed him. He stroked up and down where he could, letting his fingers run over it, humming gently under his breath until Harry began to relax, began to believe that Draco wouldn’t abandon him.

Then Draco reached out and put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, again avoiding the highest of the scars. “Let’s go back to the Manor,” he murmured. “You need a safe and lighted place.”

Harry turned to blink at him uncertainly. “Shouldn’t we go back to wherever you were when they snatched you? Or to the Ministry? They took me from there.” 

Draco tightened his lips, feeling a glacial rage slowly well up in him. He would demand why the Ministry hadn’t caught the wizards wielding the decay magic yet, and _soon_.

But a tirade wasn’t what Harry needed right now. He leaned close and whispered, “I’ll send the necessary owls. I’ll take care of everything. Lean on me. Right now, what you need is more important than anything else to me.”

Harry turned his head, eyes wide and glassy with weariness. Draco waited, the way he had for Harry to relax, for Harry to let him touch. He could wait as long as he needed to. The shrieks of pain from his heels as he rested on them were so much less important than this.

Then Harry whispered, “Yes.”


	21. With the Same Strength

To Harry, the process of getting him back to Malfoy Manor was a series of questions.

“Can you stand? Can you walk? Can you lean on me? Can you ignore what you’ll see in the other room? Do you need more light? Can you hang on while we Apparate? Can you step up here? Do you want to talk to anyone?”

Harry managed to shake or bob his head each time, and Draco’s arm would curve around him more powerfully when he did, as though he saw something in the gestures to make him think Harry was more fragile than he really was. Harry did what he could to smile reassuringly. But the smile made Draco look more worried than ever, so in the end Harry settled for keeping his gaze fixed on the path ahead and trying to worry about the immediate future, not the distant one.

He _couldn’t_ help, though, reaching out to catch hold of Draco when he realized that they were really in the Manor and Draco was assisting him gently up the stairs. “Did you contact Ron and Hermione yet?” he asked. He coughed. His throat was raw as though he’d gone without water for hours. It took him longer than it should have to remember that that came from his screaming.

“No,” Draco said, staring at him without apology in his eyes. “I thought getting you to safety was the most important thing.”

“They’ll—be worried,” Harry said, and fell painfully as they came to the top of the stairs, banging his knee on the step. He hissed. Draco tapped his shoulder with his wand, casting a spell that Harry didn’t recognize, and then scooped him up. It must have been a Lightening Charm, Harry thought, moments before he tensed because Draco’s arms were near the scars.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“I have no intention of it.” Draco’s voice was keenly gentle as he carried Harry towards the bedroom, his steps light and brisk. Harry realized then that he had one arm under Harry’s arse and the other around his shoulders, above the scars, not touching them. It was an awkward position, but since Harry seemed to weigh as much as wind at the moment, probably not as much as it looked. Harry closed his eyes and let his head droop onto Draco’s shoulder. “That’s it,” Draco whispered. “Relax. Let me take care of you.”

“Not used to it,” Harry murmured in answer, although it hadn’t really been a question. “Just—because I’m an Auror, you know. I save everyone. I don’t get saved.”

“Sometimes you need to be.” Harry thought he felt Draco’s chest flex as though he was breathing in and would say more, but he didn’t. They got to the bedroom then, and he nudged the door open with his foot. Harry blinked. For some reason, he had thought they were going to his rooms, which meant he would have needed to lift the wards on the door.

But no, they were back in Draco’s rooms, back in the place where Harry had slept so safely, so trustingly, two times already. He swallowed and cast a glance around, wondering if it would seem less safe now. But no, it just looked as it always had, and he had to close his eyes against an overwhelming rush of tears. He suspected he’d be shaky and emotional for a long time. His mind still felt shredded.

“Hush,” Draco said into his ear. “I’m here.” He laid Harry on the bed and pulled his hands carefully away so that they didn’t touch the scars. Then he helped Harry pull his shirt off so the cloth wouldn’t touch them, either, and rested his hand in the center of Harry’s chest, above his heart, watching his eyes.

Harry blinked. He was half-naked in front of Draco Malfoy, and he shouldn’t have been. All he knew about the way he lived his life said he shouldn’t have been. He was supposed to recoil, spitting and hissing, and try to protect his virtue and his loyalty to Ginny.

But he thought he had never felt calmer than he did at that moment, his heartbeat and his breath slowing, his eyes catching and holding Draco’s.

Never felt safer.

He grimaced. _That’s probably a side-effect of the marriage bond, and who knows when I’m going to get out of it, now?_ Nothing he had read or heard from Hermione said if there was a cutoff point. Did adding three bands to the rings mean that they now had no hope of breaking free, or only a smaller hope?

“What is it?” Draco lifted a hand to his cheek, and Harry blinked. He didn’t think Draco would have done that yesterday. Or had Harry moving back into his hands in that dark room

( _Don’t think of it)_

now given Draco permission, or confidence, to touch him everywhere?

“I was thinking about what my friends would think of this,” Harry said, because even though it might hurt Draco, he didn’t seem able to keep the truth from him right now.

“And I told you to let me take care of that,” Draco said. He put a knee on the bed and urged Harry backwards, gently, against the pillows, which were piled so that they would cradle his neck and his head without touching the middle of his back. “Are you going to let me take care of it?” Draco continued, his voice soft as ashes. “Or are you going to insist on doing it yourself?”

Harry closed his eyes. He knew the truth—both parts of the truth. The first was that he was simply too weak right now to send owls to his friends and start thinking about the future outside the marriage bond.

The second part was that he trusted Draco more than anyone else he could remember, and he _wanted_ to let him handle it.

“No,” he said. “I’ll let you.”

The satisfaction in Draco’s eyes was as thick as smoke. He pressed a hand to Harry’s forehead, as if feeling for a fever, and moved back. “Good. I’ll make a firecall first, and get through to the Ministry. Then I’ll send owls.” He paused, standing near the door now. Harry blinked. He hadn’t seen him move, or at least his blurry sight had warped the motion so that he couldn’t remember seeing it. “To Granger, to the Weasleys—who else? To the Head Auror?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.” Harry swallowed. His throat was dry and bitter, and he hated to ask what was bubbling behind his lips, but he had no choice. “But could you have the house-elves bring you the ink and parchment? Can you stay here while you write the letters and make the firecall?”

“Of course,” Draco said, his eyebrows shooting up. “But I thought you wanted to be alone for a little while.”

“I should,” Harry said miserably, but he was feeling so miserable about more important things at the moment that it was difficult to care about what he knew he _should_ care about. “But—I feel safe with you. Not because of the house, not because of the wards. Because of you. Can you please stay with me?”

*

Draco’s hand was shaking when he reached out and smoothed Harry’s hair back from his forehead, from the lightning-shaped scar that was no longer the most important one he bore.

How many other people had Harry Potter ever said those words to? Not many, Draco thought. He would be surprised if it was to his Weasleys, in fact, since from what Draco had seen of Harry’s friendship with Ron, he didn’t think they exchanged words like that, they just silently did things for each other. And no matter what Harry thought, he wasn’t in love with the female one and wouldn’t say things like that to her.

Then Draco shook his head. He could savor the granted gift later. What mattered _right now_ was that he could stay in the room while he did those things. He had only volunteered to leave in the first place because he thought Harry would want to pull his shattered self back together.

“Of course I can,” he said. “And I will,” he added swiftly, because Harry’s eyes had only darkened at his answer, as if he was used to hearing people say that they could do things and then leaving.

_Where did that wariness come from? I don’t think it’s something he learned at Hogwarts._

But as curious as he was, Draco knew what came first, so he ignored the questions he wanted to ask and sat down on the bed beside Harry, writing the letters and giving them to house-elves to take to the Owlery. Harry rolled his head towards him at first, eyes blinking slowly open and shut, and then reached out and held Draco’s left wrist. Draco shifted so that he could still brace the small ivory lapdesk that he used to write the letters and went on composing.

He could see the bronze gleaming in the rings whenever he looked at them from the corner of his eye, another reminder of what had happened.

He didn’t try to be elaborate in the letters, but told the simple facts about what had happened, as clearly as possible. Then he reached down and gently nudged Harry’s hand off him, so that he could put ink on Harry’s fingers. Harry blinked at him, saying nothing, subdued as a child who had been told it was bad, and Draco smiled gently at him.

“Make a mark on the letters,” he said. “Just pressing your fingers into the parchment next to my name should be enough. I thought I’d give your friends a bit of your magical signature to cling to, so they wouldn’t assume that I was making it all up.”

“Oh.” Harry looked impossibly embarrassed, his skin flushing as though he assumed that he should have thought of this and done something about it already. “I didn’t—I didn’t think they would disbelieve you. But of course they might.”

Draco cocked his head. “Why didn’t you think of it?” He had expected Harry to raise a protest all the time that he was writing, to offer a suggestion that he should be the one to do it or at least insist on checking the words so that he would know Draco wasn’t writing anything too insulting. But Harry had only lain there and watched him with those wide, bright eyes that made protectiveness run through Draco like quicksilver.

“I….” Harry exhaled the word hard, on a gust of sweet breath, and shook his head. “I trust you so much I forgot some people might not.” He smiled without humor, and some of the softness left his face. “I reckon that’s pretty stupid, right?”

“Not at all,” Draco said, and he couldn’t prevent his voice from going soft, as if to make up for the way that Harry was retreating from him. He let his fingers spread along Harry’s shoulder and play with the curls of his hair. “Not at all. I think that’s what you need right now, someone you can trust to defend you and never back away.”

“But that’s _stupid._ ” Harry stirred restlessly, reaching back as if he would prop himself further up on the pillows and then pulling his hand down again before he could touch his scars. “I mean—Ron’s saved my life plenty of times. So has Hermione. And it’s not like I’m a baby. Why should I want someone to protect me so much right now? Why does it have to be you?”

Draco took a deep, slow breath. He could understand the tone of Harry’s question, and it was frustration, not resentment, which made it hurt less. “Because you want it to be,” he said. “Because I was the one there. Because of this.” He turned the ring again so that the bronze flashed into Harry’s eyes.

Harry closed his eyes, and his face flushed. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Someone taking care of me sounds…really good right now. But I don’t want it to. I thought I outgrew those fantasies about the time I stopped dreaming of my parents coming to take me away.”

_Where were you, Harry, that you had to have those fantasies?_

But once again, Draco knew that this wasn’t the time to ask. He nodded instead, as if the statement made sense to him, and said, “Well, what happened to you in the darkness changed you. Perhaps you wouldn’t need me if you hadn’t been through that. But you have, and what you need is here.” Simple words, small words. He would make them as small and simple as they needed to be, until Harry saw and accepted.

Harry lay silent, gaze fastened on him. Draco shifted uneasily. No matter what Harry had been through, there was nothing that could dim or dull the light in his eyes, and Draco was as nervous about being judged by them as he had been when he was eleven years old.

Then Harry turned his head away and closed his eyes. Draco saw the shadow of tears around the edges of them.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you. That’s what I had to hear from you.”

Draco reached out and put a tentative hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry rubbed his cheek against Draco’s hand without speaking.

“I’m glad,” Draco said, because all other words seemed inadequate, and watched the bronze band burning in the ring until he had recovered his voice and thought he could make the firecall to Weasley.

*

“No, he’s not coming back to the Burrow right now.” Draco’s voice was calm and inflexible. “He needs to be at home.”

“That’s why we want him back _here,_ you arse!”

Harry winced. He could hear the catch in Ron’s voice, and he imagined what it must have been like for Ron to see Harry disappearing right in front of him, behind the Ministry’s wards, where they should be able to think that they were safe if anywhere was. It made him wince again.

For Ron’s sake, he could try to still the trembling in his hands and the way that he just wanted to lie there and look at Draco, and lean forwards instead, pitching his voice to carry. Draco’s fireplace was to one side of the bed, and big enough to qualify as a small alcove in and of itself, so Harry didn’t know how well Ron could see him. Hearing him would have to be enough. “Ron, _you’re_ the arse. Do you really think he would have brought me back to the Manor if I’d had strong objections to it?”

Of course, the state he was in, Draco might have managed to do that exactly that. But Harry wasn’t going to say that, even to someone he trusted as much as his best friend. This was—difficult. Different from anything he had ever felt before, this strange dependence on Draco. Until he figured it out for himself, and then shared the truth with Draco, who he owed the debt to, then he didn’t think he could expect Ron to understand completely.

“Harry?” Ron stared in his direction, squinting, and then shook his head. “I know, mate. You feel like you need to stay there because of the marriage bond. But we have to _see_ that you’re all right before we can believe it.”

Harry sighed and started to plant his hands on the bed. It hurt to heave himself out of his nest of pillows, especially with his arms still so weak, but he knew that he would have to make the effort. He didn’t need Ron and Hermione storming the Manor in the morning, especially because it would probably annoy Narcissa.

Draco leaned towards him, not quite touching, and shook his head. “You told me that he was your best friend,” he murmured.

“He _is_ ,” Harry snapped, ready to bristle if Draco said something that insulted Ron.

“Then he can deal with just seeing a glimpse of your face instead of having a lengthy conversation.” Draco stared down his nose at Harry when Harry looked at him blankly. “He cares about you. If you tell him that you need to rest more than you need to talk to him, then he’ll let it go. The problem is that you’ll never tell him that on your own, because you’re convinced that you need to be stronger than anyone else.”

“Harry?” Ron asked impatiently.

Harry stared at Draco, shook his head, and then said, because he couldn’t help himself, “When did you become so wise?”

“Being in close quarters with you is good for more than one thing,” Draco said softly, and smiled at him.

The smile convinced Harry that, at the very least, Draco didn’t have any bad intentions towards Ron and Hermione. So he sighed, crawled across the bed with Draco’s hands supporting his hips and shoulders—anywhere they wouldn’t touch the scars—and smiled at Ron from the very edge, as close as he could come to the fireplace without leaving the bed. “Hey,” he said.

Ron stared at him, mouth falling open. “What happened?” he whispered. “Merlin, mate, you look _awful._ ”

Harry nodded and started to answer, but Draco touched one knob of his spine that the scars didn’t cross, and gave him a significant look when Harry glanced at him.

 _Right._ Draco had already explained the outline of the situation to Ron, without mentioning the beast that had emerged from the scars. He was telling Harry that he didn’t need to exhaust himself with another explanation or with figuring out the right lies, because Ron was his friend. He would put up with not hearing everything right now in exchange for assurances that Harry was going to recover. 

“What Draco told you,” Harry chose to say. “Those wizards who use decay magic captured me and brought me to—some place.” He didn’t want to think too closely about the dark room, because he knew he would throw up if he did. “They shut me up in darkness, and they would have tortured me, I think. But we managed to get away and kill the wizards before that happened.”

“Where was this?” Ron asked. Harry recognized the set to his jaw now; he was shifting into Auror mode. “What happened when you killed the wizards? You’ll need to come in and talk under Veritaserum—”

“No,” Harry said.

“No?” Ron echoed blankly.

“I can’t do that right now,” Harry said. “I’m too tired, and I need to recover. What Draco told you is the truth. You can question him over the fire if you want. He might even let you come to the house and serve him Veritaserum.” A tightening of Draco’s hand on his hip suggested that wasn’t going to happen, but Harry ignored it for the moment. He could feel weariness sweeping over him like the crest of a wave, and had to fight to keep his eyes from simply drooping shut. “Ron,” he added softly, when he saw his friend open his mouth. “I know. I _know_ that you want to investigate this, and I hope that you’ll find out how they managed to break into the Ministry and snatch me there. But for right now, the only question I can really answer is that I’m all right. _Later,_ okay?”

“But, mate—with Malfoy? You’re in bed with _Malfoy_?” Ron had his wand in now, and his tight grip on it looked as if it would crack the wood.

“Resting,” Harry said. “He rescued me, and I feel safe with him.” He sighed again, and irritation joined the weariness when he saw Ron open his mouth to ask another bloody question. “ _Ron_. Can you just let it go for now? I’m really not up to defending myself, or talking about the marriage bond, or coming to the Burrow, or—any of the rest of it.”

Ron blushed and lowered his eyes, chastened. “‘Course, mate,” he muttered. “Sorry. I’m just glad that you’re alive.”

Harry smiled back. “Me, too,” he said. “But I’ll talk to you later, all right?” He was aching all over now. He didn’t know if that was a side-effect of the beast-magic he’d used, or something else, but he knew that his eyelids were drooping and he was yawning and that Draco’s hand on his hip was warm. He wanted to curl up against Draco—and only against Draco, not just pillows, not anyone else—and close his eyes.

“Yeah, mate,” Ron said, his voice and face both soft now. Harry thought he might have looked a threat at Draco when Harry’s eyelids were drooping, but if so, Harry didn’t think Draco minded, or at least he understood. “Keep safe.”

The Floo connection shut. Harry sighed and began to move backwards, to arrange himself in the comfortable nest of pillows once again.

“Here, let me,” Draco whispered into his ear, and he lifted and moved Harry. If he had cast the Lightening Charm on Harry again, which he might have, Harry hadn’t felt it. Then again, with the state he was in at the moment, there was a lot he might miss.

“Let me,” Draco whispered again, and since he was already lying back against the pillows in the right position, cupped but not cradled so that nothing touched his back, Harry didn’t understand what he meant. He opened his eyes to see that Draco’s hand was hovering above his mouth, and that Draco’s eyes were dark with yearning.

“Will you let me take care of you in the morning?” Draco whispered.

Harry sighed. The morning seemed so far away, and he wanted to go to sleep.

But the question was important, so he forced his sluggish mind to work, and nodded finally. “As long as I need it,” he said. He looked again at the bronze band in the ring from the corner of his eye. “S’pose I owe you for saving my sanity.”

Draco blinked slowly. “You think it was that, rather than the other way around?”

Harry snorted. “Of course. I wasn’t in much condition to do anything but pull myself back. I didn’t actively save you.”

“It was still remarkable,” Draco said, but his cheeks were bright pink, and he glanced away from Harry as though he was ashamed to let Harry see his eyes shine.

Harry reached up a hand that felt as though it was made of iron and turned Draco’s head back before he thought about it. “Don’t do that,” he whispered. “Like to look in your eyes. They’re my light.”

Draco reached out and touched Harry’s arm, then his shoulder, then his forehead, quick, feather-like touches that Harry suspected substituted for the embrace he wanted to give Harry and held himself back from, because of the scars. Harry closed his eyes and lay there, feeling the sleep creep up on him.

It was better this way. This way, he got what he needed, and he would recover faster, and he could give Draco some of what he had wanted when he spoke to Harry about staying in the marriage bond. 

But…

Harry knew that it couldn’t be more than that, no matter how much Draco might want it to be. Harry suspected that his feeling of safety around Draco came from the bronze in the ring, just another example of how the marriage bond had changed him. And he wasn’t going to yield to that. He wouldn’t let the bond dictate how he felt, who he chose to spend his life with.

But he would think about that in the morning.

He fell asleep to Draco stroking his lightning scar, gentle as a kiss.


	22. Opposite Sides of the Ring

“I had no idea that something so terrible had been done to him.”

Draco nodded, but kept his head bent over his plate, partially because he hadn’t had a chance to eat before or since the kidnapping, and partially to give his mother time to recover herself. He reached out one hand behind him and skimmed it down the side of Harry’s hip, reassuring both of them that they were still in the same bed. 

Then he went back to the salad. The house-elves had covered it with pieces of chicken, slivers so delicate and chopped that it was easy to miss them among the lettuce. Draco had made a point of picking them out first this time instead of simply eating what came to his fork the way he usually did. His stomach felt like a hollow drum.

“We must help him.”

Draco smiled up at Narcissa as she rose to her feet, eyes fixed on Harry. “I agree. And I think the thing that would most help him right now is knowing how the ones who took us broke into the Ministry. They took me in the middle of the street, and using Muggle methods so that I wouldn’t sense their magic in time. It has to be worse for Harry, knowing that they came through the wards of a place where he felt safe. That will damage his confidence for some time to come.”

 _And how do I know this?_ Draco suspected that a large part of it had to do with the ring on his finger. He sneaked a glance down at it, and shook his head when he saw the bronze shining again.

“I will do what I can to find out what we need to know while you stay with Harry,” Narcissa said. She looked like a spear at the moment, Draco thought admiringly, standing straight and proud with her face like a point of ice. She hesitated, then added, “And you will speak reason to him when he wakes up?”

“Of course,” Draco said, a bit insulted that she could think so little of him. “He’ll want to go back to work, but I won’t allow it for a few days.”

Narcissa gave him a steady glance. “I didn’t mean that. I mean that he’ll probably want to put distance between you, because he’ll fear how the marriage bond has changed him.”

Draco looked at his mother surreptitiously, to be sure that _she_ hadn’t grown a marriage ring and a connection to their bond as well. It sounded perfectly like something Harry would try to do, but he was surprised she had noticed. “Yes,” he said. “And I won’t let him. He needs me too badly right now.”

“Do you need him?” Narcissa ignored the hot flush Draco could feel creeping into his cheeks. “Because that may be the more pertinent question. He will fight back all the harder if he feels himself alone in his weaknesses, if he believes that you are unaffected by the bond, or affected only in being strengthened.”

Draco turned the ring around so that she could see the bronze, although he had already shown it to her earlier. “Do you think this will let either of us go?”

Narcissa cocked her head. “It may take some time to convince Harry of that.”

“Then I will do what I must,” Draco said fiercely. The mere thought of letting Harry go to face the darkness on his own—as his mad plan would probably be—hurt him beneath the heart, as though someone was trying to uproot it from his body. “I won’t—Mother, don’t fear this. Get us the information on the Ministry that we need, and what the witnesses think happened.” He grimaced, feeling as though he was about to hand her a sour apple and tell her it was a sweet orange. “I know that Weasley saw him vanish. The youngest Weasley brother, Harry’s special friend. Would you mind talking to him?”

Narcissa gave him a steady, bright glance. “Do you think I can fail to make myself charming even for one of _them_?”

“Of course not,” Draco said. “I simply hate to ask you to do it.”

“We both know that he would not speak to you,” his mother murmured. Draco tried to keep his cheeks from coloring. He never knew, when she said something that gently, if she was chiding him for his failure to control his emotions or simply stating a fact. “But yes, I do not mind. Not when it concerns my son-in-law.” The look she gave Harry then, prideful and possessive, would have irritated Draco if it came from someone who was not his mother.

Including if it came from Ginevra Weasley.

_I cannot let him go. I don’t think he can let me go. I must make him see that, somehow._

“Besides, between the two of us,” his mother said, stooping to kiss his cheek, “I think you have the harder task, although it will not involve you moving around as much. Good luck, Draco.” Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder in blessing before she turned away.

Draco finished his salad, called for a bowl of vegetables, and then lay back in the bed next to Harry. Harry kept shifting restlessly to find him when he moved; when Draco pulled his hand back from Harry’s hip, he burrowed his head into Draco’s side, and when Draco leaned too far away to put his water glass on the tray, Harry tangled their legs together. Draco smiled only until he heard the first whimper out of Harry’s throat when that happened. Then he draped his arms around Harry’s shoulders, carefully avoiding the scars, and bent down to breathe in the scent of his hair.

This was not something to play with. He was Harry’s source of strength at the moment, and he would stay with him, granting him everything he could ask for.

Whether or not he knew to ask for it.

*

Harry was alone in the darkness, and he wanted to scream, at least until he turned his head and saw the light shining steadily next to him.

He’d never seen that before, in all his nightmares of the house where he’d been trapped and the beast that fed on him, and he paused a moment, wondering if it was a trick. If the wizards had captured him again, if they could reach into his head and make him think that he was seeing something that wasn’t there—

But they had never granted a light to him. Not even the wizard Harry had killed, the one who had lost control of the beast, had done so. And if they could reach into his head, then he wasn’t really still in that pit, he was trapped somewhere in his mind, this was a memory, or a dream, and he could fight his way out.

He held his hand out, and felt the warmth of the light on his fingers. It wasn’t just light, it was fire, and that was—

Wonderful.

He rose out of the sludge and the blackness with a fierceness that surprised him. It was the sort of ferocity that belonged to his memories of the time _before_ the wizards using decay magic had captured him, the sort of clear-headed reaction he had assumed was impossible now. But somehow the light flew alongside him, flooding him with strength, touching him with shadowy, blurred images of wings that healed him. It was like flying alongside a representation of phoenix tears.

And so Harry opened his eyes, and recognized the clock on the wall, and the bed that cradled him, and the man beside him.

“How are you feeling?” Draco’s voice was deep and calm. His hand lay across Harry’s chest, which had the shirt gone, _again,_ and he stroked the skin at the edge of a muscle lightly back and forth. His eyes were fastened on Harry’s face.

Harry felt his skin heat up. He’d never had someone look at him that intimately, not even Ginny, which made no _sense._ Irritably, he reached up and shoved Draco’s hand away from him.

Draco lifted it, but let it hover in the air for a moment as though he knew Harry would change his mind, and then brought it right back down where it had been. He stroked and smoothed, giving Harry a chance to feel ripples of sensation running through his skin and down to his groin. Then he moved it back and leaned on his pillow with a careful smile. “Should I take that shove for an answer to my question?” he murmured. “I hope not. I was looking for more details.”

Harry shut his eyes and reminded himself that Draco had saved him in the darkness, that Harry wouldn’t have survived without him and, what was worse, could have devoured any innocent who came along. Or Draco himself. He knew all that was the truth. He knew that he owed Draco an answer to his question, at the very least.

And he _wanted_ to answer. He actually did. The problem was that his skin twitched and shivered the way that it did when a bug landed on it, and that Draco’s gaze rested against him like the pressure of another hand. 

Harry wanted at once to acknowledge what lay between them and to warn Draco that it would never be a real marriage, and he wasn’t sure that he knew how to do that without sounding either too soft or too heartless.

“Harry,” Draco whispered.

Harry sighed and opened his eyes. He had to stop lying to _himself,_ at least. No, he wasn’t going to be able to back away as much as he wanted to, and his relationships with Draco and Ginny had both already changed forever. He only hoped that Ginny wouldn’t resent that fact too much when she learned it. Draco sounded as though he thought didn’t have anything to resent.

“I’m fine,” Harry said. “My head hurts a bit,” he added, as he tried to sit up. “And my stomach. Do you have some food?”

“Of course.” Draco snapped his fingers with the hand down at his side, and a house-elf appeared, bowed, and vanished again so fast that Harry stared doubtfully after it. Draco’s other hand rested on Harry’s hip, rubbing in slow circles the way his hand on Harry’s chest had. “I’m glad that you suffered no worse effects than what you already did,” Draco added in a quiet tone.

Harry felt his face flame when he remembered what some of those “effects” had been. God, he’d actually begged Draco to stay beside him and said something about the light from his eyes, hadn’t he? He bowed his head.

“No need to look ashamed,” Draco said, and bent down until he was at Harry’s level again and could smile at him under his drooping fringe. “After learning exactly what you went through, I’m more astonished that you managed to survive with so little trauma.”

Harry gave him a shaky smile and decided that it would be best to change the subject—something made easier because the house-elf chose to come back with an enormous plate of what looked like spaghetti, if spaghetti came in red and gold and the sauce was white. Harry didn’t know what it was, but it sure smelled delicious. He sat up and rearranged the pillows so that he could continue sitting up while the tray was placed on his lap. He flinched when he picked up a fork and then dropped it. He hated that.

“Do you need help?” Draco reclined beside him, watching with narrow, interested eyes as Harry started eating.

“Only on not choking myself,” Harry said, and then let his eyes roll back in his head slightly as he moaned from the taste of the sauce. It was cheese-based, he could tell that much, but the red parts of the dish came from meat, and combined with the cheese and whatever else was in the sauce, they seemed to light fires in his mouth. He looked around for something to ease the heat, and Draco silently handed him a glass of milk. Harry nodded to him and drained it. Draco had another one already, which he arranged on the tray with little fluid motions that suggested he was used to lying beside wounded lovers who needed help with their food.

Except that Harry knew he wasn’t one of those, and he hated himself for making the “lover” comparison, even in his head. He sighed and put down his fork after a few more delicious bites. “Did you find out anything about how they attacked through the Ministry wards?”

“I sent my mother to find out,” Draco said. 

Harry blinked at him. “Oh. Does she have more contacts in the Ministry?”

“Ignoring the obvious, Harry.” Draco’s voice was light, but his eyes weren’t, and he shifted over to rest his hand on Harry’s hip in what felt like a more possessive clutch than it had any right to be. “I didn’t go because I wanted to stay here with you. In fact, you whimpered every time I started to move away.”

Harry’s flush felt painful, as did the way the food had suddenly lodged in his throat. “Sorry,” he said, and looked around for a glass of water. There was none, but when he clapped his hands, Juli appeared and he asked her for one. She was gone in a literal flash, by which time Harry thought he could turn back to Draco with a little more dignity.

The slight smile curled at the corner of Draco’s mouth stole his dignity again. Harry shook his head at him. “If you won’t accept it when I say ‘sorry,’ then what will you accept?” he whispered.

“You getting your head out of your arse,” Draco said. “You trusted me to protect you and bring you back to the Manor and watch over you while you slept. It’s time for you to realize that we can’t go back.” Now his eyes were wide and luminous again, but Harry didn’t think he liked above half the emotions making up that light.

“I know that,” Harry said. “I’ll never think of you as an enemy again, and I’ll defend you as much as you like to Ron and the others. You saved my sanity.” He glanced at the bronze band on the ring and away. It was best if he didn’t think too much about it.

“And I don’t despise you,” Draco finished. “So. What does that suggest to you about the marriage bond?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You can sound annoyingly like Snape sometimes, did you know that?”

“Harry.” Draco eased closer to him again, eyes on him so bright that Harry tried to back away. He couldn’t, of course, with the pillows and the tray pinning him down, and he realized for the first time that it was a bad idea to have the food there after all. Then Juli appeared and gave him the glass of water, which meant he had to take it, and that left one hand less free for resisting Draco. Draco didn’t touch him this time, but leaned over him, and his eyes were so—

His eyes were full of something Harry couldn’t deal with, that was all. He turned his face away. “I ought to firecall Ron before he tries storming the Manor,” he said lightly.

“Can’t,” Draco said simply. “The Manor’s blood wards are up now. No one can enter who’s not part of the family, for any reason.”

Harry closed his eyes. “You didn’t need to do that for me,” he said. “If you did that for me.” He wasn’t sure what was more presumptuous, Draco doing something like that for him or him _assuming_ that Draco had ordered it for that reason.

“I want you to feel safe.”

Harry opened his eyes slowly. Draco was _right there,_ and it was still as overwhelming as it had been a minute ago, but now he thought he could understand more of Draco’s impulse to be close to him. “Because you—care about me,” he said. “And you don’t think I’m weak no matter how much I need you.”

Draco’s mouth clamped shut, and his nostrils flared. “No. And if you suggest such a thing again, then I’ll embarrass you by listing all the things about you that I find attractive, and all the ways that you’re strong.”

“I should have remembered that you were a horrible, evil, sneaky Slytherin,” Harry said with some feeling. “Not even Ron would do something like that to me.”

“Because, as much as he cares about you, he doesn’t know everything about you that I know.” 

And shit, the intensity was back again, just when Harry thought he’d cracked it with his stupid joke, and Draco was near enough to touch his throat and his face, and his eyes were huge, and his pupils were blazing black, and Harry felt the strong impulse to simply lie back beneath him and let him touch the way he wanted. The way Harry wanted.

_The way I wouldn’t want if not for this bond._

That was the hell of it. What Harry felt now was _good_ , but it made him have to question everything he was experiencing, because he knew that normally, he would have folded up his weakness in a hard shell and denied Draco the chance to look inside. Was he really doing it now only because Draco had saved him and Harry trusted him? Or did it, more likely, have to do with the changes that the marriage bond was forcing on them as more bands of metal joined the rings?

He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

“You’re being silly, now.” Draco’s tone was restrained and quiet, sounding like a statement of fact rather than a condemnation. “You can feel what’s going to happen as well as I can. Do mere friends spend time around each other shirtless and experience these intense flares of feeling that I’m getting?”

“Sure,” Harry shot back, although his heart was pounding, and it had nothing to do with how near Draco’s hand was to his throat. Well, okay, it did, but not in the way that Harry would have _preferred_ it do. “Ron and I did, when we were swimming near each other the summer before we went off on the Horcrux hunt.”

Draco didn’t laugh, which Harry thought was a bad sign. And now his fingers closed lightly over Harry’s throat, although he moved them at once, sliding down to Harry’s collarbone as if he was forming a bracelet of flesh.

Or a ring.

Harry tensed and knocked Draco’s hand away this time. He heard an angry buzz from the rings, but he didn’t open his eyes. He knew that he wasn’t equal to what was building between them anymore, and Draco would see too much if he looked at him.

“Harry,” Draco said.

“Look,” Harry said, and he focused on the words as a means to leash reality and drag it back into some kind of familiar configuration. He could do this. He was equal to getting out of this, just not—not sharing the sort of things that Draco wanted them to share.

“Yes?” Draco spoke politely, attentively, as though he wanted to hear what Harry was going to say more than anything.

Harry kept himself from opening his eyes and glaring just in time. He really thought that he might let Draco kiss him if he did that.

 _That’s the bond,_ he reminded himself again. _Not some sort of innate attraction to Draco, or disloyalty to Ginny._

Those particular thoughts hurt like knives driven into his flesh, like the beast’s suckers driven into his flesh—

No. Nothing hurt as much as that. That was another thought to orient himself towards and spin around, stable. It had its own kind of gravity. Harry filled his mind with Ginny and forced himself to remember the exact shade of her hair before he continued.

“I know that some things have to change now,” he said. “I know that I can’t lie to you, and that you’re the only one I’ll trust with the full story of what happened today. I’ll tell Ron and the others as much as I need to so that they can start hunting the wizards who attacked us, but—but not everything.”

“I’m honored to be admitted to your confidence,” Draco said, and his fingers skimmed up Harry’s arm.

 _He means it, too,_ Harry thought, which made his next words all the harder. But he _did_ have to say them. Waiting and fretting would be stupid when he knew where his duty lay. The only difficult part was dragging the sounds out of his throat.

“But that isn’t the same thing as marriage. I still don’t want to spend the rest of my life married to you and only you. I still don’t want to have sex with you.” He could _feel_ Draco’s quiet smile when he said that, and hurried on, because he thought it was the statement he was most vulnerable on. He hated thinking of Draco that way, as an enemy who would take advantage of the vulnerabilities, but he had to. “I don’t love you the same way I love Ginny.”

“But you do love me.” Draco’s voice was so simple then, so bright, like light shining through a crystal.

Harry couldn’t help it. He opened his eyes and turned his face up.

Draco still lay above him on one elbow, staring down at him with a face tamed and softened in ways that Harry couldn’t remember ever seeing it before. His eyes were half-lidded, and more brilliantly blue than grey. His fingers moved in gentle, random patterns up and down Harry’s arm.

“Oh, _damn_ ,” Harry said helplessly, a commentary on Draco’s beauty as much as anything else.

Draco bowed his head nearer. Harry’s eyes crossed trying to keep track of the expression on his face, but it never really varied, he saw, from calm and composed. “Yes,” he whispered. “I thought so. It’s changed. Maybe it’s too soon for it to be everything I asked you for a few days ago. That doesn’t matter, Harry, truly. What matters is that we can’t go back, and I think you know the end of this.”

Harry closed his eyes again. That hurt more than the thought of what he was doing by betraying Ginny.

“I don’t want to be forced to have sex with you because of the magic of the bond,” he whispered.

“The magic can’t compel us that way.”

“Bollocks,” Harry snapped, and his anger helped burn off some of the sweet-smelling fog that seemed to fill his head. He rolled away from Draco’s reaching hand and ignored the wrenching protest in the middle of his own belly, as well as the sudden sensation of unease that made his skin prickle. That was the stupid bond, trying to convince him that he felt safe only around Draco. Of course it would do that, after what they’d been through. Harry had to remember that he would be safe beyond wards, too, and with his friends, and everywhere that Draco couldn’t reach him if he took proper precautions. “It’s already making me crave your touch. If it can do that, it can go further.” He glanced at Draco over his shoulder. “It probably makes you want to touch me more, too. Why aren’t _you_ upset?”

Draco’s face was quiet, assessing. He reached out as if he would stroke Harry’s shoulder, but Harry managed to shake his head. Draco shrugged and let his hand drop.

“Well?” Harry snapped, when some time had passed and he’d got no answer. “Why aren’t you upset that the bond’s twisting your emotions around?”

Draco still paused a few seconds before he answered, but when he did, his voice was low and dark and sent glorious thrills rolling up and down Harry’s spine. 

“What I feel for you after something like that may be mixed up with and influenced by the bond’s magic. But I don’t think it is. I think it simply _is_ true that that experience was overwhelming for us, for both you and me, and we can’t be the same after that. Perhaps the bond has something to do with that. But it doesn’t have to, not given everything that happened.”

He leaned forwards, face crystalline with intensity now. “And I know that what I saw last night, when you willingly gave in to me, was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Harry bowed his head. God, he wasn’t equal to this, he couldn’t cope with it, the feeling of unease at being away from Draco redoubled and his hands clenched and he was afraid that he was going to weep—

Draco’s hands eased him back into the pillows and brought a flood of comforting warmth into his stomach that chased away the cold. “Hush, Harry,” Draco whispered to him. “You can go back to being the hero tomorrow. Just let me take care of you for today.”

Harry closed his eyes, knowing he would regret it later, knowing that it was probably more the bond than anything else, knowing that Draco would want nothing to do with him if he was in his own mind—

And knowing, as Draco curled up beside him, that for now he needed this so badly that none of that mattered. He turned his head and buried his face in Draco’s shoulder, and let Draco hold him.


	23. Across the World

“How sure are you of this information?”

Narcissa paused and gave him a level look across the breakfast table. Draco raised his hand in apology and nodded. He shouldn’t have asked that question. If his mother had been less than completely sure, she would have continued her research until she had an answer or at least had discovered who was concealing it. “All right,” he said. “But it seems incredible. Surely they would have tried this before now if they were always capable of it?”

His mother shook her head lightly, moving one strand of hair out of her face before she took a neat bite of the cream concoction that the house-elves had prepared this morning. They always did that when one of the family had been out late working the night before. Draco wondered idly for a moment why they hadn’t done it for Harry, and then snorted. Of course. The only time Harry had actually eaten after he came home had been that night in Draco’s rooms, three days ago, and Draco had plied him with more substantial food then. And he never had breakfast with them.

This morning was no exception.

“Their magic is powerful,” his mother said thoughtfully, “but even it must need some time to work. I suppose that they set their power on the Ministry wards and ordered them to decay, and then struck when they had a hole that had been worn through. But who can say how long it took them to wear through?”

Draco nodded. When his mother had first brought him the news that the wards surrounding the Auror Department had merely worn and tattered away like rotting flesh, he had been incredulous, but this way made more sense. Harry _did_ say that the decay magic was unlike anything the Ministry had seen before, and he had had the same problems identifying and stopping the source of his enemies’ power.

“So at least we can tell Harry that no one betrayed him,” Draco said. “It was his enemies all along, but they are more powerful than he suspected.”

“Yes.” His mother delicately patted a bit of cream off her lips with a napkin. “How sure are you that it was wise to let him go back to work this morning?”

Draco sighed, but nodded in the way that he would if he was a fencer acknowledging a hit. Thus she repaid him for his doubt about her information before. “Not at all wise. I wanted him to rest another day. But he said two days was enough, and that he would feel better if he was back working on the case.”

“That part is probably true,” Narcissa said, and crossed her hands on the table as she leaned forwards. “How will he react around others?”

Draco looked down and rubbed his finger over the ring. He wasn’t sure if he should tell her about the short argument that they’d had when Harry was getting ready to leave for work. Draco didn’t like to think about it because he had pushed harder than he should have at the moment, and he _knew_ it, and he hadn’t been able to resist pushing anyway.

He had told Harry that he thought Harry should work a light day on the desk and come home at noon. He knew that was standard procedure for Aurors recovering from a disabling experience, and Harry must know it even better than him, since he was part of the Department. He hadn’t anticipated the way that Harry had frozen and then turned to face him, his arms folded in front of him.

“That wasn’t a disabling experience.”

Draco had lifted his eyebrows and stared Harry in the face, letting the sheer weight of reality press down on and crush that stupid statement.

“Not disabling in the sense that you’re thinking of,” Harry said, starting to tap his fingers on his arm and then forcibly stilling them. He looked off to the side. “I wasn’t physically injured in any way that a night’s sleep couldn’t cure. That’s the reason for a noon rest. Aurors who were hurt badly enough to stay in hospital or who had to regrow a limb get those rests.”

“Mentally is bad enough,” Draco said. “And tell me that you’re going to feel safe in the Ministry, with the wards that didn’t protect you.”

Harry’s arms unfolded, but his face was cold and opaque, shutting Draco out. “I won’t feel safe,” he said, as if admitting the truth was a personal moral failing. “That doesn’t mean that I can let myself indulge in it.”

“ _Indulge_.” Draco was furious enough to feel his head buzz. He leaned forwards and reached out to put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Harry ducked without seeming to think about it, and Draco paused. He’d been about to touch one of those scars. If he had ever had the permission to touch anywhere near them, it seemed Harry had just revoked it.

Harry held his gaze for long moments, eyes ice-green. Then he’d turned and walked out of the house. Draco thought of sending Juli after him to make sure that he had everything he needed, and in the end, he didn’t.

He glanced up now, and found his mother nodding at him as if he had confessed the whole conversation to her. Her smile was bright and troubled.

“I would have preferred it if we could take care of him,” she said. “But if he will not listen to us, then we cannot cage him against his will.”

“Healers do that all the time, to stubborn Aurors who want to go back to work.” Draco folded his arms in turn, and then dropped them when his mother raised an eyebrow. She didn’t approve of such ungraceful gestures, although Draco suspected that Harry would get a pass from her given his upbringing. 

“And you are not a Healer,” Narcissa said. “Not officially. I would call you Harry’s Healer, but he is unlikely to be able to acknowledge that role except at special times.”

Draco closed his eyes, forcing away the cold, difficult ache in the center of his chest. He had last felt it during his sixth year, when he was striving—impossibly, it seemed—to save his parents. He wondered if he was always doomed to feel helpless where his family was concerned. Perhaps. Perhaps it wasn’t even the worst fate, considering what could have happened to Harry if they hadn’t had the marriage bond.

But without the marriage bond, would he had given any thought to Harry’s demise other than a fleeting touch of sorrow if the story appeared in the morning paper?

He liked to think he would have. He liked to think that the _Prophet_ would have chosen some more moving writer than Skeeter to pen the editorial, and that the quality of the man would have shone through the words somehow, and told Draco what he was missing.

But…

He didn’t know. It felt intolerable not to care about Harry, to feel Harry push him away, but he didn’t actually know that he would ever have reacted like that without the marriage bond. That made Harry’s fears about the way the bond could twist their emotions make more sense.

Draco let out a long, slow breath. He couldn’t live his life wrapped up in Harry, although it was tempting. He had to get back to his business, attend the meetings that he’d missed over the last few days, offer excuses, soothe ruffled tempers. And he had an owl to send.

It was always possible that Harry might not ever yield. Draco would have laughed at the notion yesterday, but Harry hadn’t pushed him away with words then. In that case, Laura d’Alveda was still his second best choice.

*

_We need to talk. Lunch today, outside your office._

That was all the owl from Ginny said, but it was enough to make Harry’s mouth dry out. He put the parchment down on the desk, wiped his lips, stared at it, and wiped his lips again.

“Mate?”

Right. Ron was still there. Harry straightened up and smiled at him. He couldn’t let Ron know that trouble might be brewing between him and Ginny, because Ron wouldn’t put the blame in the right place. It was Harry’s fault for not making the problems clear to Ginny and working through them with her first, not Draco’s. “Yeah? You got anything new on the Ness case?”

There was nothing, or at least Harry got that from Ron’s scattered reassurances. He tried to keep his eyes away from the simple letter sitting on his desk, as deadly as a vial of plague germs, and they kept going back.

He would have to be calm, that was all. He would have to accept any harsh words that Ginny chose to offer, he would have to be clear without being defensive, and he would have to…he would have to do the right thing, instead of the almost-right thing or the thing that felt convenient to him at the time.

He wondered if staying in Draco’s bed for two days had been merely convenient.

But no. He did think that he had needed it, and if he had tried to skip that rest, then he wouldn’t have been able to return to his job as quickly. As for Draco’s ridiculous idea of going home at noon, ha. Harry would go have lunch with Ginny, and then he would come back and work, and if he and Ron hadn’t solved the Ness case by the time evening came around, then it wouldn’t be his fault.

He nodded, satisfied with himself, and turned to Ron. Ron was watching him carefully, almost holding his breath, as if he thought he could do something that would set off a flashback. Harry smiled to reassure him and leaned forwards, folding his hands on the desk. “So. What did Wilkinson find out about the runes?”

*

“Draco. A word with you.”

Draco raised an eyebrow and turned around. He still had the letter he had written to d’Alveda in his hands. He had been going to find a house-elf to take it to the Owlery, but he had looked out the window at the mild sunshine and decided that he wanted to walk. He hadn’t expected the call from behind him.

“Lucius,” he said. “An unexpected surprise.”

Lucius pulled to a stop at the head of the staircase he had called down, and his hands tightened briefly on the marble banisters. Then he shook his head as though to dismiss a fancy and continued down the steps. Draco waited for him, smiling faintly, but his father was a fool if he thought the smile indicated gentleness.

_You will never find me soft again. I wonder if you thought that I would be, without Harry around to lend me strength?_

Of course Draco would have preferred to have this confrontation when Harry was with him, but that was not the same as needing him. He turned the letter slightly as though looking it over for last-minute mistakes, though in reality he didn’t want Lucius getting a look at the name on it, and then fixed him with a polite glance as he came to a halt at the foot of the steps.

“I had hoped that you would say ‘pleasure,’” Lucius murmured. “It is a pleasure to me, to see you.”

“You’ve been without much company,” Draco said. “A flobberworm might be pleasant at the moment.” Lucius’s mouth worked, and Draco rolled his eyes, not caring now if he saw the impatience. He no longer owed this man the courtesy and respect that had kept his hands stilled for so long. “What do you want?”

“A chat with my son.”

“Who I no longer am.” Draco made a show of checking the gold watch that he wore on one wrist and turning away. “If that’s all, I have a meeting at noon that I should get to as soon as possible. Some of these people cannot be soothed by letter.”

“Draco, this could be important information. I wish to speak to you about the marriage bond.”

Draco controlled the prickling of tension that wanted to spread down his shoulders, and forced boredom out of him as if he was extending tendrils. “Yes, yes, I know, just one vault or a bit of power. You need not ask, Lucius.” It was hard, sometimes, to remember to address him by that name and not the relationship they no longer shared. “The answer is no.”

“I am speaking now about your safety, and not the price I would ask for dissolving the bond,” Lucius said sharply.

“Oh, did you discover something that would allow you to twist the bond around so that it strangles us if we don’t do as you wish?” Draco turned his head and gave his father a bland look. He had spent enough time reading in the library that he was fairly sure no such side to the bond existed. For one thing, his father would doubtless have used it by now. “I’m sorry, but I have more important things to worry about than your nonsense.”

“I am talking about the scars on Potter’s back, and the danger that they could pose to you if the bond continues.”

Draco spent a few quick moments, while to all appearances he was gazing at Lucius with somnolent boredom, reviewing the ways that Lucius could have heard about it. He could no longer command the house-elves to tell him, but Draco and his mother had not always been careful, and Harry could have been talking to himself or firecalling his friends, yesterday, about it without taking precautions. In the end, Draco thought, the most important thing was not to look for what or who had betrayed them but determine what Lucius already knew.

“You can’t take them over and use them as weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Sorry.”

“If they kill you,” Lucius said, his face resembling the marble behind him now, “then my best hope for control of the family dies with you. I know that.”

Draco shook his head. “They won’t kill me, Lucius. We’ve spent some time estimating the dangers, and the marriage bond itself creates a connection between us that should protect me. You gave us a measure of protection when you forced us together. Thank you for that,” he added wryly. “And you said before that you liked my chosen. Have you changed your mind?”

Lucius said nothing, but watched him with eyes that seemed to have hardened. Draco smiled back at him. Of course Lucius was frustrated. Draco was no longer utterly miserable and on the verge of giving in to him just so that he would end the bond. None of his father’s plans were going the way he had expected them to.

“You ought to know,” Lucius breathed at last, “that I do not want my son killed.”

“If the scars kill me,” Draco said, “then the death stems directly from your actions. Your consequences contradict your words.”

“There is no one in the world that you can trust as you can trust me,” Lucius said. “If you only knew how much the welfare of the family matters to me—”

“Bollocks,” Draco said, and saw Lucius blink. He wasn’t used to Draco insulting him like that, no matter how angry he got. He had taught Draco that the family mattered before all, that personal quarrels between its members should be smoothed over so they could talk together and make financial decisions in cold civility, and that the magical words “the welfare of the family” should dissipate anger.

But Draco understood the purpose of that education now, as he hadn’t before. It was of a piece with what Lucius had told him about forced marriage bonds. It was meant to control him, not make him a better heir.

“What matters to you are your power and your safety,” Draco said, “and your ability to _disguise_ them by calling them sacrifices for the good of the family. What you taught me, what you attempted to teach me, what you want me to do…those are related to propping you up in power. You don’t value the family as a whole, or you would have stepped peacefully aside when the Wizengamot gave its duties and rights to me and tried to teach me how to be a good head. But you’re so focused on getting your own back that it comes to read more like a desperate individual grasping for the only strength he can still possess.”

Lucius hissed as though he was a kettle. “You have understood nothing if you think of it that way,” he said, but his voice shook, and Draco smiled.

“Really?” he asked, all gentleness, all softness, because his father wasn’t the only one who could use a mask like that. “You should have had more confidence in your own teaching, that you were molding me into someone who could easily take on the family and do you proud. That you didn’t was my first clue. You never thought that anything you did was wrong, so how could you have taught me incorrectly? 

“You didn’t think you had. Instead, you simply weren’t ready to see me become your heir, whatever you said, until you were dead and no longer had to _see_ it.”

“Draco,” Lucius said once, and then stood there, as though he needed to carefully consider his next words.

“I understand now,” Draco said. “And I understand the options that are open to me now, the ways I can change my life.” He bowed and smiled at his father for a moment. “A large number of them are because of Harry, and his coming into my life.”

He left Lucius looking as if he were chewing dried, salted meat, and walked to the Owlery. The letter to d’Alveda didn’t burn his skin more than the leaping enthusiasm that worked through him on the inside.

He was free of the most profound chains, the ones that Lucius had tried to bind around the inside of his skull.

*

She was waiting for him in the corridor when he came out. Ron straightened up and looked back and forth between his sister and his best mate as though he assumed he would have to interfere, but from the moment he met Ginny’s eyes, Harry knew this was a conflict Ron could do no good by entering. It was up to him, the way it should have been from the beginning, when he first suspected that the marriage bond might steal him from Ginny.

“Ron,” he said quietly. “Go away.” He would have looked to the side to smile at him reassuringly, but he found that he couldn’t take his eyes from Ginny’s, such a deep brown and so full of hurt and pride.

“Yes, do,” Ginny said, and flipped her hand in a dismissive gesture. Harry wasn’t sure Ron would have taken that gesture from him, but with both of them agreed, he did nothing but nod and retreat. Harry had the impression that he looked over his shoulder multiple times, but then again, he couldn’t look away from Ginny to check.

“Where can we go that’s private to talk?” Ginny asked, her words little more than an exhale.

Harry led her to one of the interrogation rooms—not the best choices, perhaps, but the only utterly private spaces in the Department, and ones with thick wards. Ginny stepped in, took in the chairs and table and blank walls, and nodded, swooping one of the chairs out so that she could sit down in it. Harry took in the somberness of her black gown and silver jewelry against her red hair, and wondered if she was going to a funeral.

She might as well be, if their conversation couldn’t work out the way he hoped it would.

He sighed and took a seat across from her. “What did you most want to talk about?” he asked.

“What that means,” Ginny said, and nodded at the ring on his finger. Harry honestly didn’t know what she had indicated until he looked down and saw the gleam of the bronze. He’d had time to get used to it during the two days he was with Draco, because Draco took the chance to refer to it so often and turn the rings so that it flashed.

“That Draco saved my sanity,” he said. “The wizards who kidnapped me put me in a dark room, and I started to break down.” That much, he could tell anyone who was already aware of his fear of darkness without flinching. Harry wouldn’t hand that information to just anyone in the first place, of course. “I would have gone mad if they hadn’t brought Draco to the same place. The marriage bond flared and made me aware that I was causing him pain. He drew me back, and the way he spoke to me and touched me…”

“You’re in love with him.”

Of all the things Ginny might have said in response to his revelation, Harry hadn’t expected _that._ He started up and wildly shook his head. “That’s impossible, Ginny! I can’t be in love with two people at once, and I’m in love with you.”

Ginny took a long, deep breath, and rose to her feet. She faced him, although Harry thought what she would really have liked was to pace back and forth.

“I’ve never saved your sanity,” she said softly.

“You did during my fifth year, when you reminded me that Voldemort had possessed you, too!” Harry leaned forwards pleadingly. “You gave me someone to talk to.”

For a moment, Ginny smiled, and then the smile faded. “Yes, and you saved my life, too, when you came to rescue me in the Chamber of Secrets,” she told him, eyes steady. “But that was a long time ago, Harry. These incidents are recent. It’s no wonder you’re thinking more about Malfoy, or—there’s this look that comes into your eyes when you’re talking about him, did you know? Like you’re gazing on distant mountains, and you’re sick with longing to see what’s on the other side.”

“Is that what you think?” Harry snarled. “That if someone saves my life in the future, I’ll fall in love with him, too? I’m not in love with Ron despite all the times we’ve saved each other’s lives as partners!”

Ginny shook her head. “It’s different with Malfoy, the fact that you’re living with him, the intensity that you feel for each other.”

“I never wanted to,” Harry whispered. He could feel her drawing away from him, ending it, and he didn’t know how to convince her to change her mind. “I didn’t choose this, not any of it.”

“I know,” Ginny said. For a moment, she reached forwards and cupped his cheek. “But I think we need to face reality, Harry. I love you, you love me, but not always in the same ways, and you’re drawing away from me. I don’t want to be your lover on the side while you’re married to someone else. I want to be married to someone who’s the father of my children, who’s my only lover.”

“Me, _too!_ ” Harry caught her hand and tried to hold it. “Please, Gin?”

She gave him a gentle, killing smile. “If you’re free from the marriage bond and still think of me sometime in the next few years,” she said softly, “and I’m still free, then come find me, and we’ll try again. But I’m not going to wait around for you, and I don’t think you should wait for anyone, either.” She kissed him on the cheek this time. Harry tried to turn to the side and meet her lips with his, but she stepped back before that could happen. “I think you should be yourself, as hard as you can.”

She walked out of the room.

Harry bowed his head and put his left hand across it, feeling the hard, smooth, cold metal of the ring on his forehead. His chest ached. 

The marriage bond had given him many things that were valuable: a way to trust Draco, someone he felt comfortable talking to the scars about, two people he could say were his family, a place he could call home.

But it was taking from him, too, and Harry didn’t think it had taken all it would yet. What was next? His friendships with Ron and Hermione? His welcome among the Weasleys? His career as an Auror?

 _I don’t_ want _to abandon everything I am, simply to be a Malfoy._


	24. The Greatest Distance

Harry allowed himself a few moments to cope with what Ginny had told him, and with the thoughts about Draco that fluttered about inside his skull, bumping into the sides like bugs trapped in a jar. Then he stood up, straightened his robes and his cloak, and made his decision.

He would tell Ron and Hermione that it was no longer a possibility for him to marry Ginny. He would leave it up to Ginny to tell the rest of her family if she wanted to. He had no idea if she would want to or not. 

_I never really knew her._

But he was not going to tell anyone else. He knew that Draco would offer him sympathy, and Narcissa would speak pretty words about how it was always disappointing to lose the hand in marriage of a nice pure-blood girl. But behind the politeness would be a gleam of triumph, a certainty that, now that Harry no longer had a girlfriend, he would consent to have a husband.

_I'm still not bent. I'm still not pure-blood. I'm still not any of the things that I think Draco would ultimately demand in someone he spent the rest of his life with. I trust him, I like him, I'm his friend, but a few shared experiences in trauma can't create a lasting bond. If it did, then I would have been just as good friends with Neville and the rest of the Gryffindors I fought in the final battle with as I am with Ron and Hermione._

Meanwhile, he had an owl to send to Hermione, asking about other ways to break the marriage bond, since apparently focusing on different hobbies and people didn't work. He had spent more time thinking about Draco than anyone else since he made that resolve.

Harry paused with a hand on the door and shut his eyes. He couldn't go out there publically rattled. The gossip mills would start grinding, and then a story would appear in the _Daily Prophet_ \--without facts, but when had that ever stopped anyone who wanted to read about the Chosen One?--and that would irritate Draco.

Harry didn't want to irritate Draco.

He didn't want to hurt him.

He just didn't want to fall in love with him, either. And sometimes he thought he might if he stayed close enough. Which would just be _another_ disaster, since there was also a difference between loving someone and finding them sexually attractive. Draco deserved someone who would admire the beauty of his face and want to touch him in some other manner than clinging to him with terrified hands.

_He'll probably be hurt when he finds out that I kept breaking up with Ginny from him._

Harry flinched, but nodded. Well, he could accept that. If he'd ever wanted to live a life without causing pain to anyone, he'd already lost the chance, since he'd hurt Ginny without being aware of it. He didn't think he knew himself very well, either, if he could just thrash around unaware of the way that the people he was closest to, and had been for years, looked at him.

_I'll try. I'll do what I can. But I really can't deal with the way that Draco would react to the news of Ginny walking away from me right now. I just...can't._

Sometimes Harry was almost grateful for the mask of hero that the public had tried to press onto his face, uncomfortable as it could be. It gave him something to aspire to, something he could use to disguise his true feelings, and he wore it as he stepped out of the interrogation room and swept back to the office. Ron wouldn't have returned from lunch yet, but that was fine. It just gave him more time to settle his emotions into some kind of order.

By the time that Ron _did_ cautiously peek around the corner, Harry was deep in notes on the Ness case, and immediately fired a question at Ron about runes that made him protest he didn't know anything, and why wasn't Harry asking Hermione?

Which, of course, gave Harry the perfect excuse to go and send her an owl without his best friend suspecting anything.

Sometimes he wondered if the Hat's pick for Slytherin was something he should have ignored after all.

*

Draco leaned back in his private office and yawned in satisfaction into the mirror. For a moment, his reflection smiled back at him, the way Draco had enchanted it to do when no one else was in here and he was feeling in need of the confirmation that he had done well.

It had been a more than excellent day.

Those investors and officials who had been displeased by Draco's abrupt disappearance from their negotiations last week had been placated, perhaps by the grave expression Draco permitted onto his face when he hinted at the "unavoidable consequences of family troubles" that he'd also mentioned in his letters to them. As always, Draco had encountered a few who complained that he hadn't sent e-mails, but those who couldn't accept that fact had long since ceased to conduct business with him. Draco dropped enough other dark hints to make them believe, or say that they did, that he'd had to deal with a murder in the family, and that he had personally taken care of the murderers.

He worked in a world where such ruthlessness was respected. They resumed their rightful positions, circling around him like partner stars, and Draco could return to his business without fears that they would take the opportunity to backstab him. Well, at least without more fears on that score than usual.

And this afternoon, an owl had brought him word from Laura d'Alveda. 

The letter lay on his desk now, the only single paper on the huge, smooth expanse of ebony wood. Draco reached down now and picked it up, idly admiring the swift strokes of her penmanship.

_Mr. Malfoy:_

_Concerning your interesting offer, I propose a meeting on neutral territory. There is a small, newly-opened café in Mathematic Alley that I think would suit us admirably. Do you know it? Meet me there at noon any day of this week if you are serious about your offer._

_Laura d'Alveda._

She wasted no time, Draco thought. A businesswoman. Clipped and curt, but courteous. She saw no use in pretending when they both knew what he had proposed and what he wanted.

Harry would never be like that. When he was curt, it was because he was angry. When he was courteous, the person facing him had earned it, or at least Harry thought they had. He'd probably think "diplomacy" a four-letter word.

Draco closed his eyes. He thought of Harry's face, the blazing green eyes and the expression of trustful sleep in it when he had rested in Draco's arms this weekend and the way his cheeks would flush because he had been doing something he probably thought too gauche for words, like staring at Draco for more than a minute or so.

He thought of d'Alveda, the last time he had seen her, the smooth dark hair and the focused dark eyes and the sharp nose that sometimes reminded him of Snape's. Every gesture she made reeked of pure-blood, though to someone Muggle it probably reeked of expensive private education. She could conceal or reveal anger, embarrassment, or pleasure if it suited her purposes.

One picture was the one Draco had often thought of in the past as his future.

The other was the one he was increasingly coming to suspect _would_ be his future.

 _If he agrees to it, at least,_ Draco thought, and sat up and began to tend to the afternoon's business, wondering as he went what Harry was doing right now.

*

Hermione's owl came back to him almost at once, her owl puffed up with importance at carrying two messages in half-an-hour.

_Dear Harry,_

_I'm sorry to hear what happened, but I think your relationship with Ginny probably couldn't have endured. She wants the first place in the heart of whoever she's with, and that mans that she gave you up when she saw you letting Malfoy take the first place._

"I didn't bloody _let_ him," Harry complained under his breath as he walked back to his office with the letter. "He just happened to be the one to pull me back from the brink of insanity and despair."

Then he paused and ran the last sentence through his head again, wondering how it would sound to someone outside the situation. He ended up shrugging impatiently. What mattered was how he and Draco and Ron and Hermione and Ginny dealt with this, not what someone outside it thought. After all, Harry had pretty much had cause to distrust outside interpretation for most of his life.

_There's another magical way to break the marriage bond. It doesn't often succeed, but I think you have a better chance at it than most people, because it requires powerful magic. It's a ritual circle in which you cleanse yourself of unwanted impurities. The marriage bond can be seen as one such impurity, if you play it right._

She went into lots of details about the circle then, which Harry didn't bother to read. He'd do that when he was actually getting ready to prepare them. He skipped to the last paragraph, where Hermione stopped using words like "required hypotenuse."

_Be careful over the next few weeks. You don't absolutely have to convince yourself before the ritual starts that the marriage bond is something you want to get rid of, but it will make the moment of shedding it a lot easier when it actually arrives. So meditate, think about the reasons you want your life free of the Malfoy connection, and try not to be too intimate with him._

Harry nodded silently to himself. About what he had figured, and what he would have to do anyway if Draco's suit for Laura d'Alveda's hand was successful.

He didn't want it to be, with one part of him. That part churned and swarmed and hummed with jealousy like a hive of angry bees. Harry gritted his teeth when he thought about it and slowly forced the emotions back down.

d'Alveda could never touch what he and Draco had had together. Harry would still be the one Draco had rescued from darkness, and Draco would still be the first one Harry had admitted all the details of his imprisonment to.

That was what mattered. That was what Harry had to concentrate on. Ending the marriage bond would free both of them for a better future, and it didn't _have_ to damage their friendship.

Unless Harry let it.

 _Draco could let it, too,_ he reminded himself, and thrust Hermione's letter into his robe pocket as he arrived back at the office. Ron glanced up at him curiously. "You got an answer already, mate?"

Harry nodded. He'd asked Hermione about the runes first, before he asked about the ways to break the marriage bond, and so it wasn't a lie, what he'd told Ron. It was just a silent addition to the truth. "Yeah. Hermione says that they wouldn't be using the extra liquids from the body to make the runes if they didn't intend them as runes of imprisonment. That means..."

He was already lying to one important person in his life. He would try not to make a habit of it without anyone else.

*

"I don't want to be rude, Mrs. Malfoy."

Draco stepped through the front doors in time to see his mother, who stood opposite Harry in the entrance hall, freeze. The change ran all through her body and stiffened her muscles, made her face a mask of marble, turned her hands into grasping scorpion's claws. Draco shook his head, silently amused, and went to hang up his own cloak. It was understandable that Harry would try to put some distance between him and the rest of the family, after their argument that morning, but he had chosen exactly the wrong way to do it.

"You are being _very_ rude at the moment," his mother said softly. "When I told you to call me Narcissa."

Harry stepped back, one hand half-raised as if to shield himself. Then he recovered, took a deep breath, and said, "Of course. I'm sorry--Narcissa. But I really do have important things to do this evening that don't permit me to attend dinner with you. I'm sorry. I'd like to. But it's impossible."

"Translation," Draco called as he strolled up to them. "I haven't eaten all day and I'm afraid of what my family will do when they find that out."

For some reason, Harry's head snapped towards him with what looked to be genuine anger, his eyes practically on fire. Draco paused in mid-step, blinking. He thought that had happened when he said _I'm afraid. Is he so obsessed with being the perfect Gryffindor hero that he can't admit to fear?_

But Draco had seen with his own eyes that that wasn't it, because the perfect Gryffindor hero would never have permitted himself to recover in the arms of a Slytherin. It must be something else.

"It's none of your business what I eat," Harry snarled.

"Why not?" Draco came to a halt with his hands clasped behind his back and smiled at Harry. Harry's face was brilliant red, and he leaned forwards as if he would spring on Draco and strangle him. "Family members should look out for each other. Especially spouses. My mother didn't have to worry much about Lucius, of course, since he would never have thought of denying himself sustenance, but you're a different matter. I already know that you tend to push food far down the list of possible concerns when you're nervous or busy."

Harry settled back on his heels and moved a step away. "Does that make you the wife in this scenario, then?"

"What does being the wife mean?" Draco cocked his head meditatively. "Worrying about someone else, being the prettier one, perhaps the one who gets fucked? Maybe."

Harry's face, which had started to return to a normal color, turned so red that this time Draco thought he might choke. He shifted his weight backwards and shook his head. "Forget I said anything," he mumbled.

"I assure you, my mother has heard worse," Draco said, and inclined his head in Narcissa's direction. "Particularly from my aunt."

"That does not mean that I want you to pick up Bella's habit of discussing her bedroom activities at the dinner table, Draco," Narcissa said mildly. "Quite a disgusting activity."

Harry peered back and forth between them, his face so bewildered that Draco took pity on him. He moved forwards again and looped his arm through Harry's. "Comparing me to a woman is not the insult you think it is," he said. "Marriage means something different to pure-bloods, as I believe I'd informed you already."

"I didn't mean to insult," Harry started, and then closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn't remove his arm from Draco's, though, and the way he subtly leaned closer made Draco have to clamp his lip between his teeth so that he wouldn't laugh in triumph. Harry's mind might tell him that he should back away and try to romance his little Weasley, and leave Draco to a spouse who could give him children. But his body betrayed him, longing for the comfort that Draco could offer. Draco didn't think he could do it subtly, or he would have tried to rest his free hand on Harry's back for the extra soothing he could offer. "I just really don't have time. I didn't think I could say that politely."

"You cannot," Narcissa said. "And in particular, I don't want to have to call the house-elves later to feed you. It is much more efficient, for them and for us, if we all eat at once. Come, Draco, Harry." She nodded to both of them and turned ahead to the dining room. Draco towed Harry along with him, though from his open mouth he was still trying to find some way of objecting.

"Just relax," Draco murmured. "Did you think that you would be able to get away from my mother after insulting her?"

"I didn't _insult_ her," Harry muttered, bending towards him, and Draco sighed as Harry leaned more heavily on his arm. He enjoyed these moments of contact more than he should, since they were essentially stolen from beneath Harry's notice, but on the other hand, he doubted Harry would grant him as much and as freely as he had a few days ago. "I just said--I implied--oh, hell."

Draco chuckled into his ear and pulled on his arm. "Yes, you did. You can admit it. People have done less to my mother and had a much worse reception. You're family, and she forgives you for that."

Harry's face went promptly cold and remote, or as cold and remote as he knew how to make it, which primarily meant the color retreated from his cheeks and the passion from his eyes. "Family," he said. "For now."

"You're still thinking of ways to end the marriage bond," Draco said. "Aren't you happy here?"

Harry shook his head. "That has nothing to do with it. How can you marry Laura d'Alveda if I don't get out of the way?"

"I could still contract a business alliance with her, if nothing else," Draco thought, and wondered if he should pity Harry or not. _His own happiness has nothing to do with it. Of course._

"Do stop whispering to each other, boys. I want some conversation during dinner."

Harry straightened up, blushing so brilliantly that Draco suffered a brief twinge of jealousy. He would like to be able to affect his husband the same way, with a few carefully-chosen words.

 _You can,_ he reminded himself then, thinking of the way Harry had reacted to him in bed over the last few days. _Just not the whole time. And that's a good thing, because it would be boring if you could._

The first course was duck in orange sauce, which Harry tasted as if he didn't know what the meat was. He might not have had it often enough to be sure, Draco thought, watching him with different eyes now. He was used to seeing the lines of weariness on Harry's face and trying to coax the spark out of his eyes; he was used to the lines of scars on his back, and the way that Harry's chest looked when he was shirtless.

But there were other things he hadn't noticed before. Harry's startle reflexes, the way he turned his head sharply towards any sound, from the house-elves popping in to the loud clink of a fork on a plate. The way he held himself sharply upright in the chair, as though he hadn't often sat on furniture this fine to eat. (Remembering the benches in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, Draco had to admit that that in and of itself wasn't much of a revelation). The way he ate, neatly but quickly, as if to prevent someone from taking it away. 

The way his robes fit him. They were standard-issue Auror robes, of course, not tailoring, because God forbid that Harry allow anyone to give him gifts or order nice, expensive things for himself. And it was obvious that the robes, while they weren't too short or long at the ankles, had plenty of room at the sides.

 _He was always so skinny. In school, I thought it was the Quidditch combined with the fact that he'd rather sneak after Voldemort's minions than eat dinner. But now that he's grown, what is it? Does he take off after suspects the same way?_ Draco had had the impression that Harry was a touch more responsible now, more likely to wait for his partner to catch up with him instead of trying to slaughter Dark wizards on his own. Perhaps not.

Clues, clues to notice and assemble together. Perhaps they were linked to the way Harry had reacted to the suggestion that he was afraid. Perhaps Harry _thought_ he should live up to others' expectations of them even if he denied aloud that he was a hero, and this was part of a program of rigorous self-sacrifice.

_We can teach him better._

*

"And how much time has your friend Hermione spent studying runes? I admit it is a fascinating study, but one that bored me senseless."

Harry sat there, eating his meat while he tried to think of how to respond. He wasn't even sure which startled him more: Narcissa Malfoy making polite conversation with him in the first place, her saying Hermione's name with no trace of contempt, or admitting that runes had bored her. Harry hadn't thought that most pure-bloods admitted weakness at anything, except perhaps tolerating Muggleborns.

_She's different than you always thought she was._

But that still didn't mean that Harry wanted her as a mother-in-law for the rest of his life.

"She's spent several years at it," Harry said, when he realized from Narcissa's pointed smile that he'd been silent too long. "Or--longer than that, I think. She took Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. I never wanted to," he added, thinking he owed Narcissa a tidbit for what she'd fed him. "It seemed too boring."

Narcissa laughed softly. "Then that is one thing we have in common, Harry. One of many, I'm sure." And she eyed him so complacently that Harry blinked and lifted his fork as a shield between them.

_She really does think that I'm her son-in-law, and that I'm going to stay here as long as the marriage bond lasts. Or--longer. She acts like it's a permanent thing, and not even Draco thinks that._

"We have heard Harry's news for the day," Narcissa announced then, and turned to Draco. "What is yours, my son?"

Draco smiled at his mother, and the smile made Harry's throat abruptly ache. He didn't even know if it was because he wanted a mother to smile at like that, or because he wanted to make Draco smile like that himself. _Make up your mind, idiot._ Harry turned his attention to destruction of the piled fruit cake that the elves had brought.

"Laura d'Alveda has agreed to meet me," Draco said. "Whether she will agree to marry me is, of course, a different discussion. But I am pleased with her manner. I think we want some of the same things."

Harry closed his eyes, and told himself that that was a good thing. He would be leaving Draco in the hands of a woman like him, a woman who understood his goals and could give him what he wanted. Harry was sure that none of those criteria applied to him. He could give Draco someone to take care of, someone to trust, but he didn't think he could take care of Draco in return, other than saving his life at odd moments.

A hand rested on his thigh. Harry jolted and looked at Draco. Yes, it was his, but he kept a calm smile on his face and talked with his mother as though it wasn't. Harry tried briefly to move away, and the hand tightened.

 _I don't understand you,_ Harry thought in his direction. _How can you plan to have a future wife while you hold onto me?_

Another puzzle to baffle him. Another reason to be glad that they were separating.

But at the same time, Harry would have _liked_ to understand, the same way that he would have liked to be able to trust Draco with the news of Ginny leaving and not fear his smugness.

Another thing to regret.


	25. Clasped Closer

Harry woke as he slid out of the bed onto the floor. He was gasping, he realized, and when he reached up to grab hold of the blankets, his hand simply slid off again. The sheets were so soaked with sweat that he'd slipped out on the wetness. He buried his face against them and closed his eyes.

No, this wasn't comfortable; his tailbone and back ached from his sudden collision with the floor, and his heart was thrumming so hard in his ears that it made him feel like he was going to faint. But the scent of honest sweat was what he needed right now, to replace the scent of decaying vegetables that had haunted his nose in his dream.

The nightmares were coming back again, even with the fire lit to desert brightness and the torches in the corners of the rooms blazing.

Harry reared back and stared blankly at his hands. He swallowed. Then he swallowed again and forced himself to his feet.

The nightmare had been simple. He was in darkness, and the beast was eating him again, quiet gulps of liquefied flesh from his back. But this time, he had known that his escape had failed and no one else would ever come for him, because no one knew where he was. He was going to stay there in darkness for the rest of his days and suffocate on terror.

Just remembering it made his legs shake when he tried to pace back and forth. Harry leaned his forehead against the fireplace mantle and let the solidity of it press home until the skin above his lightning bolt scar broke and shed a faint trickle of blood. At least that was _normal,_ unlike the liquids that tended to flow from his back scars when they were wounded.

God, he just wanted this to _stop._ He had been resting comfortably a few days ago, with the nightmares breaking apart as soon as they started--

Because he was next to Draco. Because he was with someone who made him feel safe.

Harry lifted his head, blinking, and chuckled darkly. _Of course._ There was no reason for the nightmares to grow worse _now,_ several days after the wizards had captured him again, rather than immediately after. But the marriage bond had interfered. It had deepened his sense of safety with Draco, until he had nearly panicked when Draco moved away from him. That would still be in effect. The bond would want them curled up in the same bed together, half-naked and perhaps more than that, pressed together until no one could have slid a card between them--

Harry froze. For long moments, he didn't dare move or glance down, hoping that the stir of movement he thought he had felt was only his imagination.

Then he lowered his eyes, and saw that it was not. He was half-hard, the bulge in his groin a foreign sensation since the beast had captured him.

 _This can't--it's the marriage bond again. This isn't_ normal. _It isn't normal for me to be attracted to men when I've always been attracted to women. It isn't normal for me to want Draco when I never did before. Just because someone comforts me and saves my life doesn't mean I have to like them that way._

Harry cast a Numbing Charm on himself, the way he'd sometimes had to when he had inappropriate thoughts during an Auror raid, and turned back to his bed. A Drying Charm made the blankets safe to sleep on again, and he climbed onto them and closed his eyes firmly.

They weren't as warm as Draco's skin would have been. They didn't wind around him as tightly, as comfortingly, as Draco's arms would have.

That didn't matter. Harry shut his eyes and lay there, and, when he couldn't get to sleep, called Juli, told her to wake him at six if he wasn't up by then, and cast a Slumber Charm on himself. 

He wouldn't allow things that didn't matter to matter, even to himself.

*

"It's strange that you keep sneaking out before breakfast, when you must know that it's better than any of the sandwiches that you might bring to the office with you."

Harry leaped and whirled around like a dog caught sneaking food, his hands clutched close to his chest for some reason. Draco took a step forwards out of sheer concern. He could understand Harry reaching for his wand or seeking to protect the scars on his back, but not acting as if he needed to shield his heart from Draco.

The next moment, of course, the revealing gesture was gone and Harry stood there insolently, his eyes narrowed as though he considered Draco some lower species. "I've told you before. There's this thing I have called _work._ It takes up some of my time, which means that I have less to spare for Your Majesty."

Draco felt the immediate heated response that stirred up in his gut, the desire to argue with Harry, the impulse to get close and crowd him back into the wall, to shake him by the shoulders, to grip his arms, to _touch_ him. He resisted it and frowned at Harry.

Harry frowned back. "What?" he snapped, when the silence had stretched between them longer than Draco knew was comfortable for him.

"Why are we arguing like this?" Draco asked. "I had the impression that we understood each other better than we ever have after our time in the darkness. Are you really _that_ unwilling to let someone close to you, to know them?"

"It's only natural that we would recoil to a distance after being that close, doesn't it?" Harry countered. His arms were folded now, and although the gesture didn't alarm Draco as much as Harry's hands clutched in front of his heart had, it still shut him out. "We weren't meant to be friends any more than we were meant to be spouses."

"We are both now, in truth," Draco said. "Why do you feel the need to retreat? Do you think I would think less of you because of what I saw?"

"No, you made it amply clear how much you liked that," Harry said, and his teeth were parted in a snarl around the words, and his eyes were furiously bright. "It's the marriage bond, Draco. Twisting us, distorting us. It makes me feel as if I should stay close to you, and it makes you want to touch me, doesn't it? I saw the way you were looking at me a minute ago."

Draco held back the first furious impulse and considered it. Yes, perhaps his overwhelming desire to hold Harry still and watch his face go through complex changes of emotion was a bit strange, at that. He hadn't felt that as a looming, crushing need before their experience with the decay wizards.

But at the same time, he didn't think it was a bad thing, and he didn't think it was the marriage bond controlling him. He shook his head. "You think that we wouldn't notice such drastic changes. But we do. If we can notice them, then we can choose to fight the impulses or ignore them."

"Exactly," Harry said, with a softening in his fierce brightness that made Draco's mouth water. "And I choose to fight them. That's all."

"You think it's more than that," Draco said. "Or so you implied to me. That you think the marriage bond is twisting you into liking me more than you should, into being attracted to me." He eased a step closer.

Harry backed a step towards the door in response. "I don't know that," he said in a low, unhappy voice. "Not for certain. But I do think--Draco, the time we spent around each other in the last few days is unnatural."

"I didn't think so," Draco said, holding back his first furious response to that. "Not for friends."

"You think I've told anyone else what I've told you?" Harry stared at him. "Even my friends? You're insane."

"I'm honored," Draco said carefully. This was a delicate situation, and he knew that, but he was feeling his way only step by step, with no definitive idea of how to handle it. "But why not, Harry? This is something you need to talk about--"

"Because I don't _want_ to!" Harry jerked his head back, and clamped his hands down at his sides. Draco thought he understood why a moment later. Harry had been leaning towards him almost imperceptibly, reaching for him. "Why is that so hard to understand?"

"Why don't you want to?" Draco asked calmly.

"Why do you insist on asking questions like that?" Harry said, and his magic gathered around him in an abrupt, whirling cloud of thorns. Even knowing that the bond would prevent them from hurting each other, Draco couldn't help but wince. He remembered the melting wizards, too. Harry noticed his reaction, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. "Yeah, the marriage bond is pulling us together. And I don't like it, and I don't want it, or if I want it, it's only because of the bond. Go _away_."

He slammed out of the house. Draco stood blinking, letting his own tensely beating heart slow, the humming alertness drain out of him.

_Well._

_I want answers, but I don't think I'm going to get them by pushing for them._

*

"Mate, are you all right?"

Harry gritted his teeth, held back the immediate way he wanted to shout at Ron, and looked up with a nod. "Yeah. Why do you ask?"

Ron snorted and leaned against his desk, swinging a leg. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe the way you were clutching your head and acting as if you had a splitting headache a minute ago?" His voice softened. "Hermione doesn't think you ought to be working the Ness case anyway, you're too close to it. Why don't you go home?"

That would ease the headache, Harry knew, with a flesh-deep certainty that hit him like a blinding flash. That would ease the restlessness, the urge to continually test the wards and the protection spells on the windows and doors in the Ministry. He could rest behind blood-wards at the Manor, he could rest in Draco's arms--

_No, damn it! This really is the marriage bond, this is unnatural, I don't want to feel this way, I hate it--_

"Mate!"

Ron practically barked the word, and Harry understood why when he opened his eyes and saw that the desk in front of him was shredding apart. Harry clasped his hands, and his magic pulled back into them, trapped between his linked fingers. It writhed and squirmed, fought like a slimy fish to get away, but Harry held it captive and gradually forced it back down and quiet inside his body. The desk settled into two pieces, which was fewer than it could have been if his magic had gone mad at it any longer.

"Sorry," Harry whispered, aware of Ron's eyes fastened on him like chains, like tentacles, like suckers--

_No. No, I'm not thinking of that._

"Mate," Ron said quietly, and his voice held that undertone of iron that Harry had heard only a few times, when he had worn himself down working the really bad cases. "Go _home._ You need to rest. You never give yourself enough time to recover, but this time, you could be a danger to other people. And you need to be behind wards, or they might snatch you again."

The thought made Harry want to scream. He would have gone for a walk through Diagon Alley under a glamour most of the time, if he felt like this, and looked at the people he'd sworn to protect, reacquainting himself with what their faces and lives looked like. But his enemies could follow him and catch him. They had to assume that they were capable of anything, at this point, until they learned more about the decay magic.

And he couldn't go back to his flat, because that wasn't home anymore, and the wards weren't strong enough, and the crawling sensation in him that said he needed Draco wouldn't permit it.

"Right," he told Ron, because there was really nothing else he could say, not without giving away more than he meant to, and stood up and reached for his cloak in distraction. His hand went right past it. Ron handed it to him, his gaze heavy with significance. Harry looked away.

"You know we're here for you," Ron said.

 _Even when I don't want you to be._ Harry nodded, with a curiously empty feeling, and then turned away and walked blindly down the corridor outside the office. A few people called to him, but stopped when they saw his face. Harry didn't know whether he should be grateful for that or not.

He held himself under a tight rein until he had taken the lifts down to the Atrium and had to choose a destination for the Floo powder. When he checked the time, he found that it was eleven in the morning. There was at least a _chance_ that Draco might not be home, either dealing with Muggle business or out visiting a friend. He would go back to the Manor and hope that he could lock himself in his rooms and wait for this fit to pass.

When he thought about Draco not being home, his chest grew tight and his vision spotted with black, the way it had when he'd had a panic attack after he got out of the beast's captivity. He wanted to weep, to curse, to throw something. He _hated_ this. He hated being so dependent on anyone, but especially on Draco, who was going to go on and find a different future. That future would probably include him, since they were friends, but not as his husband.

Harry didn't want to feel more than Draco did. He didn't want to fall in love with someone who didn't love him.

Because he had no choice, he cast Floo powder into the fire and called out, "Malfoy Manor." He knew that more than one person heard him and stared after him. He knew that gossip would be springing up behind him like fire. That would probably displease Draco, too.

At the moment, Harry wondered if he could find it in him to care.

And his plan to lock himself in his rooms and brood probably would have succeeded, too, if the first person he'd met when he stepped out of the fireplace hadn't been Narcissa Malfoy.

*

"Thank you for meeting me, Ms. d'Alveda."

Laura's smile was thin as she rose to regard him. "Ah, Muggle courtesies," she said. "Where would we be without them?" She held out her hand.

Draco shook it, giving her a bland smile in return. "I'm sorry to say that you don't merit the title of Lady." He paused, then added, "As yet."

"We'll see," she said, and sat down again, without waiting for him. She picked up a glass of what looked like milk and might have been, and added, "I ordered already, since I had no notion whether you were coming today."

Draco accepted the implied rebuke with grace and took a seat across from her. Laura d'Alveda was as he had remembered her, dark and fair at the same time, with a shimmering kind of beauty that was most visible when she fixed her eyes on one and smiled. She wore a simple, plain business suit, with a short cloak hanging from her shoulders. Draco noted that she hadn't taken it off, and wondered if she was cold--as she might be, since she was slender--or had another reason.

"I'd like a plate of cheese," he told the waiter who came up to take his order. The man bowed and left. Laura propped her chin on her hand as she regarded him, unselfconsciously resting her elbow on the table.

"You don't worry about eating refined food in front of me," she said. "I think I like that."

"Is there any refined food here?" Draco leaned back in his seat and cast his glance around the café. It was a pleasant enough place, neat and with quick service, but not fancy. Even the windows had Muggle blinds instead of shutters or glamours to cut the glare from the street. "I ordered what I felt like at the time."

"A good point." Laura picked up what looked like a crumb of bread from the plate and held it in front of her eyes as the waiter brought Draco his cheese. "I weighed your offer like this," she said, and tossed the crumb down her throat. "Unless you can come up with something more substantial, there is no reason not to continue doing so."

"Why so light?" Draco took his first bite of a blue cheese and closed his eyes in delight. "I can offer you money and a respected name."

"Not so respected as it once was," Laura said. "And you have a husband."

"That situation may not be permanent," Draco said. "We cannot give each other everything I thought we could." That was true, no matter how the marriage bond worked out and whether he stayed in it with Harry or not. "Thus the reason for this courting. I reach out to you, and ask you to reach back."

Laura shook her head. "Looking at it from the perspective of my family, I see little to gain. You are a traditional pure-blood family, yes, but you tarnished your reputation in the war."

"I am working to regain that." Draco ate a delicate cheese that he couldn't look down to identify, never taking his eyes from her.

"You despise the Muggles, where most of my business connections are."

"I don't. My father did, but he is no longer the head of the family."

"That is more intriguing than I expected," Laura said. "But I believe that your mother also remains at home, as a gracious social hostess, and nothing else. If you expected me to do such a thing, to neglect my own business to attend exclusively to yours, then we would not suit." She spoke the words as calmly as if she had not just insulted Draco's family in several ways. She sipped the last of her milk and leaned back in her chair, watching him.

This was a test, of course, and Draco passed it by doing no more than smile at her. "My mother chose to do that because those were her talents," he said mildly. "Yours lie elsewhere. Of course I would want you to do what you do best, and as long as you had our children behind wards and spent an appropriate amount of time with them, I would not require you to do more."

"You would need to spend more time with them than I would," Laura said. "Your business concerns are less extensive and pressing than mine are. That would be part of the bargain we made."

"Agreed," Draco said.

They spent the rest of the conversation threshing out what they should do, and Draco left the café with a small smirk that he didn't think he could get rid of, and didn't want to. Laura would never be an easy spouse to live with, but then, after the practice he'd had with Harry, Draco didn't think he would _want_ an easy spouse to live with.

Of course, if Harry came to his senses, then Draco would have no need to seek a wife in the first place. But he had no idea if Harry would ever see sense as far as being with him went, and Laura was not at all a bad choice.

*

"Harry. It is unusual for you to be home in the middle of the day."

Even though he knew the Manor was his home now because of the bloody bond and he'd thought of the house in the same way, Harry's shoulders stiffened at Narcissa's words. "Yeah," he said shortly. "I wasn't fit for work. Excuse me." He started to brush past her towards the stairs.

Without doing something so ill-bred as to step into his path, Narcissa was still in his way. She took his arm with a gentle hand. "I think we should talk some more, Harry. We've hardly seen each other so far except when you were wounded or on the rare occasions that you take dinner with us. I am your mother-in-law."

"Only in a pretend marriage," Harry snarled, and jerked his arm free. Narcissa raised an eyebrow. Harry ignored the shame that flooded him. He had a lot of practice doing that, after his friends' reactions when he wouldn't tell the full truth about his captivity. "It might be real to _you_ , but it's not to me. And I _hate_ the way it makes me feel."

"If I had known that attempting to introduce you to a higher style of both cuisine and dress would inspire what seems akin to an allergic reaction," Narcissa murmured, "I would not have done it."

"It's not that," Harry said. "But that's _another_ thing. Why do you keep reducing everything to these base things, as if the kind of sheets I sleep on is more important than whether I'm happy here?" He jabbed a finger at Narcissa, who only watched it as if she could will it to fall off with her eyes. "I don't care about those things. And that isn't something wrong, or stupid, or _unrefined._ It's just _me._ "

"If you say so," Narcissa said, voice milder and cooler than ever. "But you have not yet explained what your deeper problem with the marriage bond is."

"That it keeps tugging me back to Draco's side," Harry said. God, it felt good to complain to someone about this. He already knew what Ron and Hermione would say, and he no longer had Ginny to complain to, and he already knew what Draco would say, too, and how bad it would make him feel. "That it's manipulating this panic and paranoia I have after the attack so that I don't feel safe when I'm separated from him. It's _stupid_."

"If you need him," Narcissa said, "then you should have him. I assure you, my son will not object."

Harry shook his head. "Would you say that to everyone? What if I thought I needed to cut Draco's head off and use his skull as a drinking bowl?"

"I would say what I did last night," Narcissa said, "that you and I have more similarities than are immediately apparent."

Harry smiled. He didn't want to. He wanted to storm away and start reading Hermione's letter over again, looking for details on the ritual that would cleanse him of the marriage bond. But he hadn't been expecting humor at all, and it slipped through his defenses.

Narcissa, who must have been a general in a previous life, smiled back at him and said, "To answer your question, no. But the marriage bond is real to me, and I would like my son-in-law to have what he wants, within reason. Speak to Draco about this desire for safety. He can help you to figure out how to have it and still have your independence as well."

"And that'll drag me further into the emotional life of your family," Harry said flatly. "No, thanks."

"Is it that awful to be connected to us, Harry?"

"When it makes me feel this way, it is."

Narcissa watched him thoughtfully a moment longer, then stepped back and let him go. Harry beat a retreat before she could change her mind, although he felt her eyes on his back all the way up the stairs. She was probably contemplating some new way to make him change his mind.

It wouldn't work. He couldn't let it work.

Feeling as though he wanted to find Draco and just stay by his side for the rest of his life was a disease that he _had_ to cure.

Once he got his protective spells raised behind him, he pulled out Hermione's letter and began feverishly rereading it. There had to be something in here that could help him.


	26. Farther and Nearer

Draco stepped into the sitting room where his mother sometimes went to brood, and then paused. He had not wanted to be right about where she was. There should be no reason for her to brood. Draco had had a successful meeting that was important to the family, Lucius hadn't dared approach her since her quiet stripping of his defenses, and Harry was at work.

Then Draco cocked his head as he realized that the wards didn't whine and tug at him like spoiled children. That meant Harry was home, within the walls of the defenses.

Back where he was supposed to be.

Draco frowned and checked the clock to make sure it wasn't later than the one-thirty it felt like. Then he followed the stone path set into the floor around the rim of the small garden in the middle. In the garden, it was always spring, one set of flowers coming alive due to warming and preservation spells as another set faded. His mother had said that she came here to look at beauty that she could always count on to exist. And she sat there now, on a large couch that curved as if protectively around two sides of the garden. Her hands were set on her lap, her face calm.

That was _not_ a good sign, Draco knew. He took a seat at the further end of the couch and waited.

"I had not realized that he felt so trapped here," Narcissa said at last, after Draco had watched the sunflowers in the garden turn softly in the direction of the light cast down on them from above.

"Harry?" Draco asked, although there was no other candidate for the interpretation.

Narcissa nodded. "He returned home today to blurt out things I had not heard him say before. One of them was that he did not feel safe away from you. He blames the marriage bond for this." She paused. "And us. I believe that he believes the marriage bond would let him go if we did not treat it as a real union."

Draco sought for a few adjectives to describe that viewpoint, and had to settle on one. "That's ridiculous."

"Of course it is," Narcissa said. "But Harry is more volatile than I realized. When he was young, I think, he subsumed his volatility into saving the world. Now that he is older, it has turned--inward. And sometimes it falls on the people around him. Like acid." She sighed and glanced at Draco. "Perhaps your words will prevail with him where mine would not."

Draco leaned back on the couch and thought about that, stretching his legs out in front of him towards the roses as he did. Yes, perhaps he should consider speaking to Harry. He was not as confident as his mother that he would convince him, if only because Harry seemed to consider the notion of speaking reasonably with him an unreasonable one at the moment. But he could start at a distance, appeal to the women they both shared in common. Both Ginevra Weasley and Laura d'Alveda were pure-bloods. Harry might not find marriage and the notion of closeness so repulsive if Draco began speaking of it in those terms first.

"He went to his rooms?" he asked Narcissa.

His mother's eyes shone with clear gratitude for a moment before she lowered them and nodded. "Yes, he did. Go to him, Draco. Ask if he will lower his protective spells. It is not good for him to be so isolated."

Draco recognized the tremor in the back of her tone then. A member of the family stood in danger, and danger from which she might not be able to protect him. She disliked having to rely on someone she had not manipulated into fighting for her.

Draco dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Harry does like me, Mother. He trusted me with secrets he's shown to no other of his friends. I can persuade him if he'll only listen to me a short time."

Narcissa inclined her head and said nothing. Her breathing was gentle and comfortable, now. When Draco left the room, she had leaned forwards to coax the tendrils of a climbing plant back inside the rim of the garden. 

*

Harry sat back and closed his eyes. Hermione's precise instructions for the ritual promptly sketched themselves across the back of his eyelids in glowing lines. Harry looked down again at the letter and smiled grimly.

 _Good._ He could perform the ritual on his own. Yes, it would take a lot of magic, but Harry had cast almost no spells today, if one didn't count the charms he had performed during the night after waking from his bloody dream. His skin hummed with it, and as he stood and backed away from the letter, his vision narrowed and seemed to take on jewel tints.

Yes. He would use his letter as the focus for the ritual, which required an object that mattered a great deal to the caster. Harry thought that he might have been more eager to part with his wand at the moment than with the instructions. Memorized or not, he would check them more than once. It was important that this go _exactly_ right, that nothing falter or fail.

Then, he would be free.

The first incantation curled over his tongue in a mess of Latin, but Hermione had written out the stress and the pronunciation for him, and Harry was sure he had it right. Sure enough, when he finished the last word, the letter began to glow, and then a spoked wheel of green light spread out from it, sprawling across the floor, surrounding it with brilliance. The wheel radiated up to the edge of Harry's tossed cloak and then stopped, glowing fiercely.

Harry licked his lips and told himself not to be uneasy that the light was the color of the Killing Curse. Hermione's notes said it was supposed to be, and there were only so many shades of green in the world, after all.

He started to stretch out a hand for the next part of the spell, but jumped when he felt the pressure of someone against his wards. It wasn't a physical knock. That didn't matter, though. The spells functioned to give him that sensation in the back of his head, if the person who stood there had come closer to the door than a few feet. Harry turned his head, feeling his shoulders twitch and hunch, his hands rise to defend him without consciousness of his wand.

"Harry." Draco's voice was soft and serene, as though he was merely issuing an invitation to dinner. "I want to talk to you for a while, if you're amenable."

Harry cursed under his breath and looked at the letter on the floor. The green lines around it were already beginning to flicker and fade; it took an effort of will to sustain them, and Harry's will was elsewhere, focused on trying to get Draco to go away. Harry growled under his breath and brought them back with another flick of his wrist. He _would_ get rid of Draco and go on with the ritual. This was too important.

"Not right now." He thought he managed to make his voice remarkably normal for someone feeling what he was right now, but Draco still hissed softly back at him, the noise channeled into Harry's ear by the wards. "I--you need to leave me alone for right now, Draco. We can talk later."

"Why later and not now?"

Harry closed his eyes and shoved a little more magic into the circle. It flared radiantly. He wondered if his eyes would look like that after the marriage bond was broken and he could be free and himself again. "Because later _isn't_ now," he called, his voice grinding the way he wished his teeth could. "I'm sorry, Draco, but you're distracting me from something important."

 _There._ It sounded like he was talking about Auror work, and even if Narcissa had told Draco why he was home early, Draco didn't have any reason to think that Harry wasn't holed up in here with notes on a case. Harry thought he had made it clear that his work was important to him. Besides, he had a personal stake in the case that he and Ron were working to solve right now.

"What is it?" Draco must know the tones of his voice better than Harry had realized, or could have wished to. His words were lower now, more intense. "Harry, let me in."

"Are you crazy?" Harry laughed. The laughter stuck in his throat. The circle was fading again. He slashed his hand down, and the green lines shone like marshlight. That was good, right? That was the color they were supposed to be? He didn't remember anymore. He felt the way he did when someone touched his scars. "I'm the paranoid person who doesn't even trust you near me right now. Why would I lower the wards?"

"Because I'm worried about you," Draco said. "I know you're in danger."

"That's ridiculous." Forcing his voice back under control was the hardest thing Harry had ever done, but he managed it. "Yes, I want to concentrate on solving the case, but that's so I _won't_ be in danger anymore--"

"The ring is buzzing the way it did when were in the darkness, Harry. I'm worried about you." Draco's voice dropped into such softness that it was hard for Harry to think it was a command, even though he knew it was one. "Harry. Please. Let me in. Just for one second. Just to see if you're all right."

Harry licked his lips and closed his eyes. "And you'll go away if I'm fine?" he asked. He could show that he was. He could stand in such a way that he blocked Draco's view of the circle on the floor, or even let it fade until it was less noticeable. The letter, if Draco saw it, would lend credence to his lie of working on case notes.

_Why do I have to lie to him?_

_Because you'll never have the freedom to love and be loved for yourself if you don't._

"I will."

Slowly, feeling his scars burn and itch the way that the one on his forehead used to do around Voldemort, Harry reached out and flicked his wand in the pattern that would dismiss the protective spells on the door.

*

Draco tried not to fall against the door in limp relief as it opened. The ring on his finger had begun to leap about like a cricket the instant he got close enough to the door to feel the tension of the wards Harry had strung, and a bolt of pain had traveled up the center of his ring finger. Draco had restrained himself from knocking on the door because he knew what was likely to happen to his hand and he didn't want to deal with the burns, but it had taken a greater level of control than it should have.

_I want him. I like him. I trust him._

_I wish that was enough for him to be going on with._

The door swung open. Draco stepped inside immediately, although he held his hands low in front of his body and let Harry see that he wasn't holding his wand. He wasn't going to be pushed back out the instant Harry decided that he didn't want Draco there. He was going to look around and make sure Harry really _was_ all right first.

"I'm fine," Harry said.

His voice surged out, abrupt and sharp, and he turned sideways to Draco as if that would make him a smaller target. Draco swallowed. He had half-thought about putting his arms around Harry, but that didn't seem like the best idea.

An acrid smell of magic hung in the air; it had to be magic, when Draco could see no food or Potions components that would cause it. Harry edged towards him, using his body to block a clear view of the floor. Draco sighed. Harry was putting himself into danger again, for what he undoubtedly thought was a good reason, and Draco would have to step carefully to handle it.

"Physically, yes," Draco said. He made sure not to move. "But what about mentally? Spiritually?"

" _Spiritually_?" Harry stared at him as if Draco had turned into a house-elf.

"Why not?" Draco gestured with his chin at the scars on Harry's back. "Those are spiritual injuries as much as anything else, I think. They certainly injured your relationship with your friends."

Harry frowned and glanced behind him. Something on the floor, Draco thought, and he wouldn't have been so worried that Draco saw case notes or a folder. What immediately came to mind for Draco was a ritual circle, and although that would be a stupid thing to do, he of all people knew that Harry was not immune to stupid impulses.

"I'm feeling tense," Harry said. "Tired. Tired of being tied to you by the marriage bond, too."

"Can I not convince you to trust me?" Draco asked. 

"Why?" Harry's weariness was abruptly more visible than it had been before, almost hanging from him in strings, slackening his muscles and his face as he stared at Draco. "You're seeking a new wife. I wish you luck in finding her. Which, congratulations, but I don't have anyone like that, and I don't want to be the one dangling after you when you're just fine without me. Not--I can't put up with anything like that again. The beast made me powerless. I don't want to be, ever again."

Draco swallowed. This truth was what he'd come seeking to find, but he didn't know that he could reason through it as fast as Harry needed him to. 

"You'll have someone," he said. "Ginny Weasley. I know you're in love with her. If you fall in love with me, too," and he had to pause so that he didn't speak the words with the hope that wanted to follow them, "then that's hard, but it's not the end of the world. You'll have someone to marry."

_Someone who can never make you as happy as I can. But I don't know that that matters to you._

Harry froze, then jerked his head up and down. Draco had seen more convincing nods from trained Crups. "Right. Of course. Sorry. And it's not your fault if I fall in love with you. Tired, like I said."

"Harry," Draco whispered. "Now you're just lying."

Harry turned fully to face him, his emotions all on display for a long, crazed, vivid moment like a lightning flash. He tried to shut it down again, but the despair behind everything was still there, cracked across his face. Draco wanted to reach out, kept his hands down at his sides with an effort, and made a private vow that when this was over and Harry was back at his side, he was going to spend a long time just holding him.

"Ginny broke up with me yesterday," Harry said. His voice tore, and he swiped a hand through the air, coming nowhere his face. "I don't have anyone now. Except you, and it's not fair, not when you want to marry someone who can do what you want them to."

"I told you before," Draco said, "this marriage with you can give me everything I want."

Harry seemed to cling to that statement like a rock in a flood. "But not _everything_ I want."

Draco winced. He was in the flood, too, but edging out on a branch above it and reaching down desperately, hoping that his hand would catch Harry's. "I didn't mean that I would hate to fall in love with you. Just that I could remain in the marriage without it, and that if we weren't lovers I could still enjoy being with you. I was trying to leave room for you to have a female lover, a mother of your children. Did I not say that right?"

Harry closed his eyes. Then he shook his head. The motion looked odd, and Draco realized why a moment later. His head was trembling, and looked as if it would fall off his neck. 

"Harry," Draco murmured, and not all the consideration in the world could keep him from reaching out this time.

"That's not what you said," Harry whispered. "That's not what you _meant_." He danced back from Draco's hands. His voice was creeping up the register.

"Not at the time," Draco said. "Some things have changed." He was contradicting what he'd said a minute before, but he thought it more important at the moment to give Harry what he needed, even if it meant admitting a mistake. "Now I want more from you, but I thought you wouldn't ever give it to me. Not just wait a while to give it to me, but _never_. I didn't want to wait around for something that wouldn't work out."

"Neither did Ginny," Harry whispered. His lips looked cracked, dry, and when he opened his eyes and smiled, Draco saw the sheen in them. "So you have that much in common."

Draco lunged forwards and wound Harry in his arms. Harry arched against him, and Draco didn't know whether it was to fight Draco or himself.

Then he said, "I _hate_ this," and bowed his head until his chin rested on Draco's shoulder. Draco closed his eyes in return. He didn't particularly like watching Harry break down, either. This was something he'd put off and needed, but it hurt him so much, Draco would rather that almost anything else had happened. 

But he would hold Harry through it, now that he understood there was a chance, now that he understood that Harry had successfully hid certain emotions when Draco thought he was displaying everything.

*

_You can't do this. You can't just break down in front of someone who hasn't even been your friend for a week!_

Maybe he couldn't do it, but it seemed that it was going to happen anyway.

Harry focused on long, deep breaths, because he had heard often enough from Hermione that that was supposed to calm someone down who was panicking. And he was. This wasn't what he had _planned_ when he opened the door. He'd planned to shove Draco out as soon as possible, in fact as soon as Draco had seen that he wasn't bleeding to death, and resume the ritual. He hadn't kept any of his promises to himself except keeping the ritual secret from Draco, and even his secrecy over Ginny choosing her own life was useless now.

But he recognized the scraping feeling behind his eyes, in his throat, in the scars on his back, in his soul.

He was tired. He had run and fought and struggled until he couldn't accomplish it anymore. He might have been able to fight the wizards who had so recently captured him if it wasn't for the darkness. He'd had plenty of energy then, panic-strength to fight his way out of the trap.

This was something else, the moment when he let his defenses down because he had no way of raising them.

"It's all right," Draco murmured, soothing a hand up and down his back so hard that Harry's robes pulled up. "I've got you. There's no reason to fear."

Harry wanted to laugh at that last, but he knew it would break out in a sob, and there were still a few humiliations he thought he could avoid. More to the point, he just didn't want to listen to Draco's words as anything but soothing nonsense right now. He let his head droop more, his eyes close, his weight rest against Draco until Draco swayed, and then he stood upright enough so that Draco could move them over to the bed and no more. He sank down onto the pillows, then, and dug his head into them as if that would help somehow.

Maybe it didn't matter that it couldn't help permanently. Maybe helping for a little while was enough.

"We have to do something about this," Draco whispered. "Catch the wizards who did this to you. Heal you of the scars." He hesitated, then added, "Work out what to do about our marriage."

"The Ministry's working on the first part," Harry said, closing his eyes and letting the words come. "They're embarrassed that the decay magic wore their wards through and they didn't even notice."

"Not good enough."

No, for Draco it probably wasn't. Harry sighed and tried to dig a little more strength out of the stretched, scraped soul he thought he had right now. "I don't know what can heal the scars."

"We'll find out."

"You make it sound so simple." Harry dragged his eyes open so that he could look at Draco. "And...Draco, I do think that I'm going to love you, but I'm not some project that you can fix. I won't always need you like this."

The smile that had sprung into being on Draco's face with his first words didn't waver. "I know that," he said. "So we figure out something else. Keep growing, keep spreading, keep changing. It's what I had to do after I suddenly found myself head of the family without knowledge of the Muggle side of the business. I did it through sheer refusal to give up." His hand found Harry's, and though he held Harry's wrist in what looked like a delicate grip, he squeezed down hard enough to force a grunt out of Harry's mouth. "We'll do it this time."

"Even though you don't love me," Harry said dully.

"I could, just as you can love me." Draco's voice shook on the first words, steadied on the last. "No, I'm not there yet. But neither are you. We'll be partners in this, just like you wanted. You could argue that you've changed my life more than I've changed yours already."

"Ha bloody ha ha," Harry muttered. "I would have gone on being the same and without collapsing if you hadn't pressed me. This is a _big_ change."

"I think you would have fallen apart eventually." Draco's eyes dulled a bit. "I'm just glad that I was here to catch the pieces."

"Sorry to make you participate in cleaning work," Harry muttered. His eyes closed in spite of himself, and he shook his head and tried to sit up. Draco pressed him back down. Harry glared, but he didn't think he had the strength to resist, even if he _had_ spent more of this week in bed than he ever should have. "I know that house-elves usually did that for you."

"There is no one else I would trust with this," Draco said.

Harry _had_ to turn away and press his face into the pillow. He tried to be strong, to look back, but it just didn't work. Fine, he would go to sleep and rest and relax like a good little boy, and when he woke up, maybe things would have gone back to normal for a while.

"Good," Draco said, and his voice took on a teasing tone Harry didn't think he would have dared a few seconds earlier. "I always thought you should come home at noon, you know."

"I didn't oblige you," Harry muttered. "It was eleven."

"Close enough."

Harry sighed. This was--he didn't know what this was. It was weird, and he felt as if he'd failed in some way, not standing up strongly to Draco and completing the ritual the way he'd fully intended to an hour ago.

But at the same time, he felt so much _better_ to have told Draco the truth. Not a nameless someone who could help him, not a Mind-Healer, but Draco.

 _Maybe he was right. Maybe I did need help._ His _help._

_Maybe that's all right._


	27. An Artifical Distance

Harry opened his eyes and grimaced. His head pounded the way it did when he hadn't got enough to eat the day before. His stomach also felt like it was sticking to his ribs. He sighed and started to sit up.

Draco lifted his head from a book and crossed the room to him. "How are you feeling?" he asked quietly.

Harry studied Draco's face before he answered. Draco looked remarkably calm and collected for someone who had felt the ring buzzing to indicate Harry was in danger, but then again, that could simply indicate that he'd had time to think about it. Harry darted a glance around the room, and groaned. Most of the light came from the fire. He'd slept longer than he thought.

"I have to stop making a habit of this," he muttered.

"Caging up your emotions until they eat you alive? I quite agree." Draco didn't smile, although his tone had something like a touch of humor in it. "If you could refrain from hurting my mother, I'd also appreciate it."

Harry winced. "I didn't do that, did I?"

"She was far more affected than she would have been if she had spoken with someone outside the family on the same topics." Draco paused, watching him. Harry said nothing, tracing a finger along the edge of his blanket's pattern instead. Draco's voice sharpened. "That ought to tell you how she regards you. This marriage is real in all the most important ways."

Harry paused to gather his strength before he responded. No, he really didn't want to shout at Draco. He didn't want to go back to exactly what he'd done before, forcing himself away from the Malfoys because their family life was closing in on him like a cage.

But some things had to change. One of them was this insistence that the marriage bond was the equivalent of any freely chosen marriage. Harry leaned back as much as he could without brushing the pillows with his scars and looked up.

"I'm getting my strength back," he said. "And I'm going to use some of that strength to disagree with you."

"I imagine that you will," Draco said. "You wouldn't have let me take care of you in the first place if you weren't at the edge of your strength."

Harry smiled grimly. "That's true, but I meant it in another way. I trust you, Draco. But I want you to trust me, too."

Draco frowned at him. "What question have you asked me that I have not answered?"

"How serious are you about courting Laura d'Alveda?" Harry shifted his arms across the sheets and nodded. Yes, his muscles felt as if he'd had a full night's sleep, which meant that--once he'd had something to eat--he should have the ability to do what he needed to do. "You want her as a wife, and me as a husband. There's a contradiction there that I'd like to have explained." He made the last words diamond-edged as he looked up and into Draco's eyes.

*

Draco wanted to snap back that Harry didn't understand the complexities of pure-blood tradition, and that he hadn't seemed receptive so far to the idea of being Draco's husband. What did he want, clearly explained and logical feelings when his own were anything but?

Then Draco caught himself with a sharp breath and closed his eyes, shaking his head. No, that wasn't the way to go about it. Harry would still have lingering traces of embarrassment because he had needed so much care, and the last thing Draco wanted to show him was something that Harry would take as a sign of contempt.

"I am serious about it because I want a true marriage, by my standards," Draco began.

"Which you already have, you keep telling me," Harry said. "Why seek something you think is real when you have it?" He sat up all the way, the sheets falling around him, his eyes fastened intently on Draco's face. He didn't have his wand right now, and he didn't need it, not when he could cause terror in Draco just by staring at him. Or, well, not terror, Draco tried to reassure himself. Just the desire to be somewhere safe on the other side of the universe. "So what is it? Is Laura your back-up plan in case I prove more reluctant than you anticipated?"

Draco paused, but if he was going to pride himself on telling the truth, he couldn't deny that he had thought in exactly those terms. He nodded.

Harry's eyes flared, and then the shadows that Draco was used to seeing but hated crowded into the back of them. "I see," he said quietly, to no one. His hands clenched in the sheets, and he looked as if he was fighting back a shout. "Well. If you want me to think this is a real marriage, then you'll have to stop the courting. If you don't want me to, continue it, and then help me figure out some way to break the bond."

"There is no way." Draco took a stiff step forwards, and then stopped himself. He wouldn't touch Harry unless he knew it would be a caress or a reassuring touch instead of the strike it felt like he would give. "My father can change his mind, or one of us can die, and the bond would leave the other free to remarry. Those are the only ones I know."

Harry gave him a deep smile. "And you've told me yourself that you didn't do some of the reading you should have done, because your father convinced you that certain things about your pure-blood heritage were true that clearly _aren't_." The last word stung Draco like ice. "Hermione told me about a ritual that can cleanse one of unwanted stains. I was about to perform it when you interrupted me."

"To get rid of your scars?" Draco asked, because that was the first use that would have occurred to him.

"To get rid of the bond."

Draco reared back. He opened his mouth, and realized that he had no words. His throat ached, and he shook his head, but there was no ability to speak when he now knew how Harry regarded their marriage.

"Why shouldn't I do it?" Harry's eyes were so bright that it would have been pleasant to be able to dismiss his words with the pretense that he had a fever, but Draco knew they were beyond that. "You're seeking another wife. I just hurt your mother, who's been supportive of me for the most part. I don't fit in here. The wards, even, only accept me because of _this_." He held up his left hand as though making a declaration of war, and the ring shone sullenly. "Your father's been exiled from the family because of me, and I haven't brought any valuable qualities in that could have replaced him. I can't give you children. From every perspective that makes any sense, you should help me break the bond because it's a bad business arrangement."

There were words in Draco's mouth, now; the only trouble lay in choosing which ones to voice first. He finally did, and his voice cracked from the start, which made him sound less impressive. Then again, given the way Harry was watching him, maybe what he _needed_ was less impressive. "You don't understand. What about the times we saved each other, the trust you've shown me, the secrets you've told? Do you think all of that means _nothing_?"

"I think the effect can't linger," Harry said, and now his voice was gentler, and he looked at Draco with something like compassion. "The problem is that we can't build a relationship on things like that, on moments that flash and vanish. I saved your life, but then you saved mine, so there's no life-debt. You got me to rest immediately after the traumatic experiences, but you seem to be turning that into a compulsion to make me rest from my ordinary _job,_ which can't happen. That's the problem, Draco. I can't go on showing you trust just because I showed it once. I have to be an Auror, and I have to investigate cases that are going to put me in danger and make you upset, and you have to be a pure-blood and hold attitudes that I find repugnant in general, even if you relax them for me. It _can't_ work. I think it could serve to make us friends, but even with my friends, I shared other things beyond the life-saving. That was just what made us the most noticeable to other people."

Draco shook his head. "I can give you more," he said. "I want to give you more. But you keep rejecting it."

"Not the help," Harry said. "The advice, yes, and the luxuries. But that's it. What else do you really have to offer me, Draco?"

Draco winced. He might deserve that, on some level--

But not every level, which meant that behind that came the anger, leaping down into his body from his mind like a kindling fire.

He leaned forwards. Harry met him gaze-to-gaze, so that they actually ended up closer than Draco would have liked. He tried to ignore that. The important part was spitting the words at Harry and making him understand the truth, even if he had to coat Harry's face with _actual_ spittle.

"Help. Advice. Luxuries, all of those. And a way to keep you from dying of misguided nobility before you hit thirty, you fucking _wanker._ "

Harry, damn him, looked just as calm as if someone hadn't started shouting at him. "What if I said my life is not the highest price that I can imagine paying?"

"It's the highest price _I_ can!" Draco shouted.

"Even that's not true," Harry said. "I accept that you don't want me to die," he added, cutting off another of Draco's rants before it could begin. "But you could pay with your home, and your own life, and your mother's. I'm just not that important in the scheme of things to the Malfoy family, Draco. I _know_ that. I'm not really surprised, especially when you're courting another woman to become your spouse while I still officially am. Hell, I helped you pick her name out. But you see why it makes me feel that I'm not really part of the family?"

Draco glared at him, reduced to silence again. It wasn't that he didn't have plenty of arguments he could make, but, well...

To make them, to state flatly that Harry was important to him and no one could replace him, would mean that he had to give up his backup plans. No pure-blood woman to fall back on comfortably and marry if Harry deserted him. No means to gain social acceptability among his peers the way a real wedding would have. No means to have children.

Then Draco closed his eyes.

He had just thought of a marriage with Laura as a "real" one. Which rather contradicted all he'd told Harry about how real this marriage bond was to him, and what it meant.

And there _were_ means to have children. It simply meant that he would have to do something more complicated than sleeping with his spouse.

Draco shivered. He had to let go of the ledge he was clinging to and drop into the storm if he was going to satisfy Harry. He had to trust Harry as much as Harry had trusted him with the secret of the scars and how they came to be, and then to touch them.

He didn't know if he could do it.

When he opened his eyes, Harry was nodding. "And _that's_ it," he said softly. "It's not that I don't like you, Draco, or trust you. It's that those things _are not the same as being married._ Not for you, not for me, not even under your mother's definition." He shrugged a little, and for a moment his mouth clamped tight, his face turning bright red. Then he plunged on. "I think I might even be s-sexually attracted to you, but that doesn't make a marriage, either. Thanks for teaching me new things about myself, I suppose? But I'll have to pursue them outside our bond."

"No, you won't," Draco said.

"That doesn't mean the same thing as that I _don't_ have to," Harry said, and his eyes had that mad glitter again. "And if we break the bond and so aren't married anymore, then you won't have the ability to dictate what I should do. I wouldn't have to stay here anymore, either. I could go back home, and--"

"You don't understand," Draco said, although a part of his mind whispered that he couldn't blame Harry for that, not when he hadn't understood until this moment, either. He put his hands on the bed and leaned forwards, doing his best to loom over Harry. Harry just stared back at him, not moving. _Note: never attempt to intimidate him when he thinks he's right._ "You won't do such things because--because the thought of you sleeping with someone else is repulsive to me."

"That's just too damn bad, isn't it?" Harry asked softly. "Because the thought of a real spouse, someone who really belongs with me, courting someone else, is also repulsive. But you want to do that. Which means that the marriage isn't real, and I can date and sleep with someone else if I want to."

Draco shook his head. He wanted to say something about the blistering, rageful jealousy in his mouth without letting it spill over onto Harry, and wasn't sure that he could. Was he the only one affected like this? he wondered. Harry didn't seem jealous so far, or at least he didn't experience this thrumming upset that Draco got from the mere _thought_ of seeing Harry touch another person. 

"It's different," he said at last. "You know what my ideal of marriage is. There would be no passion between Laura and me. We would compromise. But you--I don't want more passion between you and someone else than there is between us."

"And that's the fucking problem." Harry's voice had lowered, but only got stronger and firmer for all that. "You don't want a marriage like I want, but you don't want me free to find one, either. Well, fuck _you_. Only I never will," he added tauntingly, and started to roll out of bed.

Draco reached out and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

He choked a minute later. Harry's wand had come out of nowhere and dug into his throat. Draco held still as Harry reached out, picked up his hand, and dropped it from his shoulder to his side. 

"I didn't give you permission to touch my scars," Harry said.

"You--you came close," Draco said, waiting until Harry had dropped the wand from his throat to try and speak. His heart was hammering wildly, and he didn't know what he was doing or what he wanted or what he would say next. _Is this how Harry feels, all the time? It's_ horrible. "Or you gave me permission to touch the skin between them."

"And now I'm revoking it." Harry's eyes were brighter and calmer than Draco wanted them to be now.

Draco closed his eyes. That one statement hurt more than all the thoughts he'd had about Laura not being willing to marry him.

_Which should tell you something._

But Draco still winced back from the thought of promising that he would give up Laura. Harry hadn't made any such promises; he had talked about going out and finding someone else to fuck, in fact.

The jealousy burned the inside of Draco's throat again. He opened his eyes. "Fine. Fine, I won't touch you." He backed away and bit the inside of his cheek, hard. He _hated_ the thought of someone else seeing Harry's scars, hearing his war stories, putting him to bed--

And he had to stop that thought before he broke a wall with his fist. He looked back at Harry and sought for, and found, a calm center where he could speak from. "All right. What would make the marriage real to you? What would keep you here, instead of moving out the minute you get the chance?" _What will keep you in my bed?_

*

Harry examined Draco for a minute. His hair was mussed, and his cheeks were such a bright pink that Harry thought he could have made toast on them, and his hands kept flexing shut and open at his sides, full of so much energy that Harry wondered whether he had to worry about Draco punching him.

He didn't _think_ so. Then again, he'd had lots of thoughts about Draco that had turned out to be less rational than he'd believed at the time.

"I want you to let me go through with the ritual," he said at last. "I have to be free from the bond." He tried to gentle his voice when Draco's eyes widened. "Don't you see? It's hurting us both, holding us both back from what we really want. It's best if we get rid of it."

"I've never heard of a ritual that would," Draco said stubbornly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "And as we all know, your education on such topics has been so complete that it could rival the contents of libraries," he said acidly.

Draco's flinch seemed to rumble back and forth, all the way up his body. "That was uncalled-for," he said at last.

"Sorry." Harry shrugged. "But, believe it or not, I really don't want to spend the rest of my life married to someone I fight with like this. Someone I can trust, someone who's helped me, but who isn't all the things I would need someone married to me to be."

"I could try to be," Draco said. "If you tried to be to me."

"Fine," Harry said. "Then I could promise not to date anyone else as long as we're still married. If you promise not to court Laura."

Draco hesitated.

Harry snorted. "I thought not."

"I can't--you're asking me to give up an awful lot," Draco said in a voice that stormed and surged through Harry's veins like a tide of alien blood. "A promise of security, of safety. The promise that I could marry someone who _would_ understand the kind of marriage I want, and choose to give it to me. The business-like proposal that I still feel most comfortable with."

Harry nodded. "I know. And I don't think that either of us should have to compromise, not on something this important. Oh, sure, compromises are part of marriage," he added, seeing Draco open his mouth to argue that part. "But you want all those things, and there are some things I just _can't_ do, like bearing you children. And there are things I'm not willing to give up, like someone I can have sex with and fall in love with. On those things, no, we can't compromise."

Draco stared at him. "This situation is unusual," he said at last. "But the marriage is as real to us as if I had courted you the way I'm courting Laura."

"Not real enough to give her up for me," Harry said. 

Draco dropped his eyes.

"I'll apologize to your mother," Harry said, and stood up, with a careful stretch. His muscles responded to him better than they had that morning, and, much better, the brewing confusion and anger and horror were gone. That was good. Now he could work. He didn't have to try and keep secrets concealed from Draco, either. _That might have been what was making me feel worst of all._ "And to you, if you want. But I'd really appreciate your help and support in this ritual, because I think it's our best chance to snap the marriage bond."

"What happens if it doesn't work?" Draco demanded, abruptly, savagely, taking a single long stride forwards as though he assumed Harry would allow Draco to corner him again. "Are you just going to pretend that we're not married anymore, and go out and fuck someone else?"

"I'll figure that out when it happens," Harry said, and laughed as he heard a rumble from his stomach. "Do you have food about? I'm starving."

Draco continued looking at him as if he hadn't heard a word Harry had said, or, more likely, as if he were hoping for the failure of the ritual. Harry shrugged and snapped his fingers. Juli appeared before the sound faded. He had to admit, there were some things about being a Malfoy that he would miss when they were gone.

"I'd like toast, pumpkin juice, whatever kind of meat would be easiest for you to make, a bunch of fruit, and ice cream," he told her. Juli bowed to him, eyes shining ecstatically, and vanished again. Harry turned around to find Draco still staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

*

Draco shook his head. He felt as though a world he was confident of knowing how to navigate had broken into little pieces around him. He had been the one to help Harry so far, and letting him out of that dependent role was hard. He wanted to say that, and he wanted to say that he had never known anyone as resilient as Harry, and he wanted to say that he was willing to do a lot to stay in the marriage.

Laura wasn't even the sticking point. Draco could imagine a future where he stayed married to Harry, and used one of the other methods he had read about to secure the next Malfoy heir.

But to let go, to just _fall,_ when Harry wanted out and the ritual could work and Draco would be the one left standing there with all his work wasted, all his trust invested when he wouldn't get as much in return, all his boundaries crossed for someone who wouldn't realize the sacrifice he was making...

He couldn't do it. Not right now, at least. (Not that he had any idea if mere time would change his mind about this, either).

"Harry," he whispered.

"What?" Harry watched him with bright, merciless eyes. Draco wondered if that was the last thing a mouse would see, looking up at a hawk as it swooped down.

Draco took a deep breath, and retreated to an earlier point in the conversation. Telling Harry how he felt right now would also count as a pushing forward of trust into unfamiliar waters, too deep.

"You said that you share things with your friends outside of the life-saving," he said. "Ordinary moments."

Harry nodded. "I did."

"What if we can do those kinds of things?" Draco asked. "What if they worked? Would you go on a date with me, spend time with me at my business one day, or let me spend time with you? Would that work?"

Harry blinked. "Well," he said at last, "we could try. It doesn't mean that I'd agree to stay married just because we got along there, you know."

Draco would have liked more of a guarantee, but he nodded. "Agreed," he said. "And in return, I'll help you work on the ritual."

"Ever the bargain-making Slytherin," Harry said, and although his smile was wide and his voice gentle, his eyes looked a little sad.

 _How can I stop being that?_ Draco thought, sitting down as Harry's food appeared and Harry took a chair to eat it. _How can I bend myself until I break when I don't know if it would be worth it, if you would stay?_

He pushed the thoughts aside, because they wouldn't help, and turned to something that would. 

"Tell me about the ritual."


	28. Closing the Distance

"I wanted to say sorry, Mrs. Malfoy."

She turned to him, and her face was so cold and remote that Harry winced in spite of himself. She looked like a marble statue standing there, her pale hair coiled behind her shoulders, her hands folded in front of her as though they were holding an invisible skein of wool. She looked like statues Harry had seen of Fate, in fact, the few times he had run into Dark wizards who used such things.

"If you were," she said, her voice soft, demanding, relentless, "you would call me by the first name I have, multiple times, given you permission to use, rather than by my married name."

Harry winced again. He was sure there were all sorts of hidden messages in those words, like the part where she called Malfoy her "married" name rather than her "family" name. He knew the distinction was important to pure-bloods, although he didn't know exactly what the distinction _was_.

 _If you're going to be part of this family, possibly forever, don't you think you ought to_ learn?

"Sorry, Narcissa," he said.

She relaxed minutely, enough to walk around him to the couch that stood behind him. Harry sat down facing her, fighting the impulse to fold his arms or perch on the very edge, although they were defensive maneuvers he would have liked to use. They would make him look too much like he was on the edge of bolting, he knew, and, accurate impression or not, he didn't want to confirm that. 

"Tell me why this is so hard for you," she said, sitting on the couch in a graceful, elegant way that made it look like the only way people should ever do it.

"The apology?" Harry asked, trying to keep from staring at the delicate patterns in the marble on the walls. Blue and silver veins. He had no way of knowing whether they were natural or not, and no polite way that he could think of to ask. "Or calling you by your first name?"

"Calling me by my first name." Narcissa leaned towards him, and Harry blinked. Was it his imagination, or was there a slight tremor in her voice? Did she actually _care_ about this in a way that went deeper than just caring about his rudeness? He remembered Draco saying that he'd hurt her, but...

"Has someone who asked that of you hurt you?" Narcissa continued. "I could understand the reaction, though I would also ask you to acknowledge and travel past it, for the sake of the comfort of both of us."

"Uh," Harry said. "It's just...you're in a position of authority. Draco obviously respects you a lot. You're a rightful part of the family and the house. It would feel like calling one of the victims' relatives that I worked with by first name when I was investigating a crime scene. They belong there. I don't."

Narcissa closed her eyes. She looked pained. Harry did fold his arms this time. Lying upset her, telling the truth upset her, and being himself upset her. He reckoned that being a Malfoy might not, but he couldn't think of himself that way, and he doubted he would even if the marriage bond worked out. He would still remember how he came to be here, the fact that the bond had forcibly changed his name, and that he had once thought of the people who had this name as enemies.

It was one thing to consider that they might be better people than he had ever acknowledged in Hogwarts. It was another thing to consider _himself_ one.

"This is your family," Narcissa whispered. "This is your home."

"But so were my parents," Harry pointed out, "and the house where they died. So are the Weasleys, and so is the Burrow." He tried to smile, because he felt that someone should, with the relentless tide of gloom creeping into the conversation. "Maybe the problem is that I have too _many_ families rather than not enough."

Narcissa shook her head. "You feel discomfort with your surroundings, and with the ideals that we hold dear," she said. "What can we do to make them more familiar to you, more comforting?"

Harry shifted his weight. Another tactic that he hadn't expected her to pursue. He had thought she would get up and walk away from him, the way that Draco had a reason to do if he really wanted to marry Laura.

_Why should anyone have to give up anything for me? I made a bargain with Draco, that's one thing. But I didn't make a bargain with her._

He wished the situation could be more like it was with the Weasleys, where they simply folded around him and that was _it,_ that was the whole of the process, he was just there and one of them. But then again, maybe that would have felt like he was betraying the Weasleys if it happened. He just didn't know.

"I don't want you to give anything up," he said. "Or--or change yourselves, or something, just to make me more comfortable."

Narcissa examined him through narrowed eyes. Then she twisted her head to the side and said, "You are not used to people putting your comfort first."

Harry snorted. "Yes, the madman who chased me throughout my childhood was the first indication that it wasn't everyone's top priority."

"But even those who declare good intentions towards you are distrusted," Narcissa said. "And it has something to do with family, with the fact that you can't imagine someone who considers you family putting herself out for you."

Harry felt as though he had a target pinned to his back that someone had already shot with two arrows, and now they were aiming the third. He had to assume they would hit, unless he could distract them. "That's because of the orphan thing," he said. "And Molly Weasley acted like my mum. She was the first person I'd ever met who did, except my _actual_ mum, and I only have one memory of her." Wild unicorns couldn't convince him to say what that memory was, either.

Narcissa's gaze sharpened. "A family is missing from your list," she said. "The Muggle one who raised you."

Harry sat still. The walls of the room could have fallen in on him and he would have felt less like he needed to get away. But he sat still, because running would have confirmed too many of the conclusions now stirring behind Narcissa's eyes. There was still the chance that he could extricate himself from this relatively unharmed if he sat still.

"No one in that family acted like a mother to you," Narcissa said. "Although I believe I remember hearing somewhere that Lily Potter had a sister."

Harry met her gaze. Not for long, though, because a violent twitching in the corner of his right eye made him look away. He swallowed loudly as he did, and wondered why in the world he was just sitting here like an idiot instead of arguing with her that he had a good life and no one had hurt him or abused him or offended him.

_Because it's not true._

_Since when does that have to do with anything, when it involves the Dursleys?_

"What did they do to you, Harry?"

Harry reached deep, deeper than he had reached when he was working up the strength to do the ritual despite Draco's interruption at the door, deeper than he had reached when he was trying to find the will to continue with the Horcrux hunt. The only times he could compare to it were when he had to walk into the Forbidden Forest to die and when he had to hold back the monster dwelling inside him so that Draco would have a chance of surviving.

_I can do this. I'm stronger than the memories of my childhood. They had a part in making me who I am, but they're not the whole of me._

"The same thing that any family raising a child does," he said evenly, and this time he managed to meet Narcissa's gaze. "Some bad things, some good things. Taught me moral lessons. Fed and sheltered me. Scolded me, but let it go in the end. Stared at me uneasily sometimes, wondering how I would turn out."

"I think the staring and the scolding were much the most frequent."

Harry nearly snarled, and then remembered that he didn't have to _confirm_ the guesses she made. He merely shrugged and smiled, and Narcissa leaned back on the couch as if she wanted to study his face from this new angle.

"It would explain much," she said, as if talking to someone else, "from the unease that you feel at claiming another family as your own, to your insistence on staying out of the way and at a distance from the interactions between us that you regard as important."

"It would explain a lot," Harry agreed, confident now that he would get through this because he hadn't run when she first made the guess, " _if_ it was true."

"And it is not?"

"Not in the slightest," Harry said, and showed off his teeth.

Narcissa watched him, and Harry had to turn his head away in the end. He _hated_ that curiosity showing in her eyes now. He'd seen it before, in the faces of reporters who had assumed they were in a good position to track down the Dursleys, and that he would talk to them if they did. They wanted to know what had happened to him, not to help, but simply to _know_. He hadn't expected it from Narcissa, but then again, it was merely a sign of how little he fit with the Malfoys.

"Do you accept my apology?" he asked abruptly, standing. "Only I agreed to meet Draco in Diagon Alley at noon, and I think I'll be late."

"Accepted," Narcissa said. "If you will come back to me tomorrow and we will speak of this again."

Harry grimaced. "I'd prefer not to," he said. If she cared for his comfort as much as she said she did, maybe she would accept the deep reluctance in his voice and let it go.

"Does that mean that you will not?" Narcissa looked the picture of serenity now, gazing up at him as if her only interest in his actions was what he would do next. Her hands stayed clasped in front of her. Her breathing didn't stir the front of her gown. Harry wondered if she _was_ breathing.

"I don't want to," Harry repeated. "Please don't make me."

He hated to reveal that much, in a way, because it would tell Narcissa that she'd stumbled onto something important. But it might also hold her off, and he was gratified to see that the curiosity dimmed in her eyes, and turned into something else. Of course, the "something else" was no more comfortable for him, and he turned away and paced to the door of the sitting room, nervous with energy.

"You may go, Harry," Narcissa said. "And I will not ask you to speak to me about your Muggle family until you want to."

 _Until, not unless,_ Harry thought. _She's still arrogant enough to believe that I should._

But gratitude was the strongest emotion he felt right now, so he nodded and smiled and saved breaking into a run until he was at the door of the Manor.

*

"We really have to go to an apothecary?"

Draco smiled at the distaste in Harry's voice, but kept his eyes fixed on the street ahead and the people who swirled and darted there, some of them getting out of the way, some of them gathering into clumps to speculate about what business Draco Malfoy and Harry Malfoy could have together even as a married couple, and some of them simply going about their normal business. "Do you have some objection to them?"

"You try being a student Snape didn't favor and seeing how you like them," Harry muttered.

"I must admit that they're not my favorite place even as a student Snape _did_ like," Draco said, and steered Harry adroitly up the steps of Aoife's. "But we need ingredients for your ritual that we won't find anywhere else."

"If you insist," Harry muttered, and then looked around with stunned appreciation on his face as Draco drew him further into the shop. Draco hid a smirk. Aoife's tended to take people like that when they were seeing it for the first time.

It wasn't that it was different from so many other apothecaries in the basic setup. Barrels of less sensitive and more common ingredients, such as bat wings, lizard tongues, and dragonfly eyes, occupied the wall near the door, with scoops for the discerning customer to make his own choice. The counter was on the wall opposite the door, with rarer ingredients behind it. On shelves safely out of casual reach and warded against a Summoning Charm sat cages, boxes, mortars, pestles, cauldrons, stretched skins, vials, glasses, cups, stirring rods, flower presses, and numerous other objects that Draco wouldn't expect Harry to understand or appreciate.

But Aoife's was not dark and dim in the way that so many other apothecaries were. The inside of the shop was filled with light, beaming softly from the moonflower specimens that the current owner grew from jars behind the counter and attached to the ceiling. The predominant smell was sweet, the elusive scent of many different kinds of flowers, rather than the dust or the blood that seemed to perfume other apothecaries in Draco's experience. And the walls were of wood and decorated with carvings of Quidditch players, the symbols of the Hogwarts Houses, and graceful unicorns, as if to prove that the owner was an ordinary wizard like anyone else.

Or witch, in this case. As far as Draco knew, it was always a witch who had owned Aoife's, or at least worked in the front. She stepped towards them with a nod now, a tall woman with immaculate grey hair. She wore white gloves on her hands that led up to the elbows and were stained with runnels of red and brown. "Can I help you gentlemen?" If she saw Harry's scar, she saw no reason to indulge in excitement, but chose Draco as the more experienced consumer and focused on him.

"Yes," Draco said, and pulled out the list he'd made. "We need six sunflower leaves, three ounces of shaved silver, five pegasus hooves--halved, mind you--and two dried adder skins."

"Hmm," the apothecary murmured. "I have the leaves and the hooves. It's going to take me a few days to acquire that much silver."

"We can wait," Draco assured her. Among other things, those few days would give him and Harry the chance to spend more time in each other's company, and perhaps teach Draco what the hell he wanted to do.

"I don't believe we've met," Harry interrupted, smiling at the apothecary and ignoring the way Draco stared at him. That was more casual friendliness than he got from Harry even now.

He swallowed the jealousy and gave a small bow to Harry before turning to the woman. "Harry Potter, this is Jeanette Rabelais. Madam Rabelais, Harry Potter."

Madam Rabelais nodded with no change of expression, and Draco could almost see that endearing her to Harry even as he watched. He ignored the temptation to grouse to himself. All right, so he would never treat Harry as though they hadn't crossed paths before. That didn't make it a goal to aspire to.

"Thank you," Harry said. "Are any of the ingredients on the list illegal, Madam Rabelais?"

Draco choked. That was a question he wouldn't have asked, and he opened his mouth to scold Harry for rudeness--

Then he realized that the reason he wouldn't ask was that he knew already, and closed his mouth, wincing. Harry really should understand the legality and illegality of certain ingredients better than he did, and he had a responsibility to try and learn, as an Auror. If Madam Rabelais could teach him without offending him, Draco should stand back and let her try.

She looked at Harry carefully now, as if to ask whether he was making fun of her, and then seemed to decide it was ignorance, the way Draco had, rather than deliberate discourtesy. She shook her head. "Silver and sunflowers are naturally occurring ingredients; the wait for the silver will happen only because I never keep that much of it on hand. Most potions require small amounts."

Harry nodded, paying focused, serious attention. Draco turned away to examine a barrel of dried toads so that he wouldn't feel that stupid, foolish jealousy.

It was just...he and Harry had come here as one of their "dates," spending time in an ordinary setting, and Harry seemed to want to find someone else he could talk to instead. Draco would have liked a few more words addressed his way.

"And the pegasus hooves?" Harry asked. "I thought those were classified as non-tradable, since pegasi are magical creatures."

Draco could hear the smile in Madam Rabelais's voice. He didn't torment himself by turning around to watch it. "Pegasi are also raised as mounts and show horses by a great many people, Mr. Potter. One can call them domesticated and common. Their hooves are no trouble to obtain."

"And the adder skins?" That came after a long, slow pause in which Harry seemed to be considering whether he could accept that definition of domesticated. Draco rolled his eyes to relieve his feelings. Harry was such a _Muggle_ sometimes.

"They are also readily obtainable." Madam Rabelais's voice had acquired a rough cadence that Draco had heard in it before when he was asking whether her ingredients were fresh. "May I ask whether you have some reason to suspect that I would trade illegal ingredients, _Auror_ Potter?"

Draco smiled and turned around again. Harry had flushed, and he turned one hand up in what was probably an unconscious gesture to demonstrate that he didn't have a wand. He shook his head.

"I didn't mean for my questions to come off as an interrogation," he said. "But we need these ingredients for a ritual that I want to perform, and there would be hard questions later if any of them turned out to be illegal. I don't know much about potions."

Draco rolled his eyes, and didn't care who was watching him this time to see him do it. Harry didn't need to tell the woman that they needed the ingredients for a _ritual,_ for fuck's sake. Draco would have been happy enough to keep that part of the business to themselves and let Madam Rabelais guess, or, as was more likely to happen, have her put the order out of her head as anything except business. On the other hand, he hadn't narrated the full list of ingredients, as there were some that he possessed himself. So Madam Rabelais would have a slight obstacle in her path even if she wanted to research what ritual they were performing.

"I see," Madam Rabelais said at last. "So you were protecting yourself rather than considering the damage to my reputation if anyone found out that I had been selling illegal ingredients."

"Er, yes," Harry said, and his flush deepened.

But he had said one of the only things he could have that might have calmed her ire at him, Draco knew. Madam Rabelais didn't enjoy someone watching out for her, even when they claimed only the best of motives and she understood who they were. She nodded. "Very well. Then you will accept my reassurance that I am not doing any such thing, and that I will have the ingredients on hand when you call for them again. Give me three days for the silver." She nodded regally to Draco and turned her back, returning to the barrel of beetle scrapings that she was sorting through.

Harry opened his mouth as if he would ask another question, but Draco took his arm and hustled him out of the shop. Harry went, though now and then he glanced back as if he assumed that Madam Rabelais was like one of his Dark wizards who would launch a spell at their retreating backs.

"That was odd," Harry said.

"The only odd thing was that you asked the question in the first place," Draco said, walking briskly and ignoring the stares this time. He wanted to get Harry to a private place where they could discuss this more easily. "Did you _really_ think that I would take you to an apothecary with a dubious reputation?"

"Really? Yes."

Draco stopped in the middle of the street and stared at him, which increased the looks they were receiving until Draco thought some of the people trying to give them might faint from the effort. Harry was the one to snort this time and grab his arm, towing him forwards.

"Why?" Draco was trying to keep his voice low so that they didn't give a free show to anyone else, but it was difficult. "Why the _fuck_ would you assume that I wouldn't check out whether it was all right for you to enter an apothecary, that I wouldn't check that it sold illegal ingredients--"

"Because that's the sort of thing that would occur to me," Harry said, "as an Auror and someone who has to worry about the Ministry investigating me at any time. But it's not necessarily something that would occur to you." He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes were bright and frank. "You've told me that pure-bloods are different and that you have different standards from me. I thought that this might be one of them. From things you've hinted, you don't mind a bit of illegality in your Muggle business."

"That's not the world I have to live in," Draco said irritably. "And it's more threats than outright actions, anyway." _Of course he would have paid attention to exactly what I didn't want him to pay attention to, instead of what's needed._

"So you wouldn't commit crimes in the wizarding world, where it might get traced back to you?" Harry summarized.

Draco shook his head. "Of course not."

Harry blew out his breath, eyes narrowed as if he was contemplating an unsolvable problem. Draco didn't see why it had to be unsolvable. All Harry had to do was study pure-blood culture a bit more and admit that he might not know everything, and keep an open mind.

"Look," Harry said at last. "Arguing like this gets us nowhere. What if I--if we agree to a conversation where we can ask each other honest questions, but refuse to answer questions that might be uncomfortable? And we do our best not to argue with each other's answers."

Draco frowned. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to do. He still thought their best chance of getting to know each other was in ordinary surroundings, talking about ordinary things.

But Gryffindors favored grand gestures, he knew. And this would at least be preferable to continuing the fruitless rows and wishing Harry would study up some more without having the power to compel him to.

"Fine," he said. "Where should this take place?"

"In your gardens," Harry said without hesitation.

Draco blinked. "You want it at the Manor?"

Harry glanced at him. "I want it in a private setting, where we can feel safe, but also in a place that's not familiar because of other conversations, like your rooms or mine. The garden it is."

Draco nodded. "You needn't fear that I'll you get away with dictating everything," he said.

Harry snorted. "You wouldn't be you if you did."

Draco wasn't sure that that was meant to be a compliment, but on the other hand, he was wise enough not to ask and find out.


	29. In a Private Place

Harry tried to control his nervousness as they Apparated in front of the Manor and passed through the gates, aiming for one of the back gardens. Narcissa couldn't _really_ know he was back, he had reassured himself. And she had promised to refrain from talking about the Dursleys unless he wanted to.

_Do I trust her to keep that promise?_

The problem was, he wasn't sure that he did. Or he did and he didn't. He admired her. He knew that she had gone out of her way to make him more comfortable in the house and the family when she didn't have to, and she had been welcoming from the beginning, while it had taken him and Draco much longer to get used to each other.

On the other hand, she had discovered the secret that he would give a lot to protect in the first place. And she _wanted_ him to talk about it.

Harry had tried. He wasn't that stupid. He knew that what the Dursleys had done had hurt him, and sometimes he thought it would be better if he could talk about it.

But he never had the right words, and the hints he dropped around his friends made them so upset that he'd just stopped. He didn't want them to get upset. He wanted them to _understand,_ to understand everything, that it had been painful and humiliating and that it was over.

Maybe Narcissa wouldn't be such a bad audience, at that. Harry thought she might have some more emotional distance from it, since she was older and had to have seen worse during the war when Voldemort was living right in her house.

Or maybe not, since she also said that she considered him part of the family. Harry sighed. The only way he thought he could know for certain was to make the experiment and tell her, and he didn't want to do that without knowing for certain. Impasse.

"Can you tell me what you're thinking so deeply about?"

Draco's tone was edged. Harry blinked and glanced up, to realize that Draco had stopped walking and he'd got several steps ahead. He started to turn back, only to encounter a stare as unyielding as steel.

But Harry had learned to read Draco a little better than he could at first, much better than he had ever _thought_ he could have, and he saw beneath the surface now. Draco was breathing faster than their short walk, or even the brisk one through Diagon Alley before that, could account for, and his back was straight, the way Harry thought his might have been when he talked with Narcissa, waiting for a blow.

 _He really hates it when I ignore him. Or when he thinks I'm ignoring him. It really bothers him._ Harry frowned, startled that his attention could be that important to Draco, and then shrugged. _It's probably the marriage bond again. Or he's starting to experience the same thing I am with the trust turning into--something else. Either way, we need to deal with it._

"Sorry," he said. "I tried to apologize to your mother before I met you, and the conversation just got a little more intense than I expected, that was all. I was worrying over it."

Draco's spine smoothed down, and he smiled. Harry blinked again. _That little can calm him down? That's odd._

"My mother tends to do that to people," Draco agreed easily. "But why worry over it? You know she would never do anything to hurt you." He began to walk again, glancing at Harry from the corner of his eye. They had passed the Manor by now and begun to reach the garden Harry liked best, the one with a smooth green lawn and blue flowers growing everywhere. Harry saw a flash from the corner of his eye and started, but it was just their reflections passing in a pool half-hidden among the bushes.

"The topic she started up was hurtful in and of itself," Harry said. "Nothing she did."

"What topic was it?"

Harry grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. _Great. I was trying to keep it from her, and now I've started it with_ him. "Nothing important."

Draco swung around to face him, and Harry stopped walking. The flowers, the sunlight, the pool, the grass, they might have ceased to exist as far as Draco was concerned. He stared, and Harry felt his own back going up. He repressed the temptation to retreat. They'd come here to have this out, and one way or another, it was going to be.

"I'm tired of you saying that," Draco said. "We're in the gardens of the Manor now, where we promised that we'd be honest with each other. Listen. You can refuse to answer the question, or you can give me an honest answer, but nothing else. No lies. It's not 'nothing' that would make you upset with my mother or make you stare off into the distance and ignore the fact that I'm _right here._ "

Harry closed his eyes. He'd set up the conditions himself. But it had seemed so much simpler on the street in London, where he'd learned that one assumption he made about Draco was wrong and he'd looked forward to learning more about what was real, what was right.

He had forgotten that he would have to give of himself, and he had half-hoped that Draco would find talking about himself so fascinating that he wouldn't really care about Harry's answers.

_Second stupid assumption of the day. Third, if you count the way I hoped that Narcissa would leave me alone._

"All right," he said. "We discussed my Muggle family. She made some guesses about them that were accurate, and some that weren't. I don't like discussing them. She promised not to do it again until I was ready, but I don't think I ever will be." He opened his eyes and stared hard at Draco. "Your turn. Why do you care if I pay attention to someone who isn't you, like Madam Rabelais?"

*

 _His_ Muggle _family._

_Yes, that would explain some things._

Draco tried to ignore the visions that opened up before him, the things that Muggles could have done to Harry during the years when no one knew where he was and simply assumed that the Boy-Who-Lived must have the happiest, most fairytale-like life that anyone could wish for. After all, his entire existence seemed like a fairytale.

Concentrating on the question that Harry had asked him was harder than he had thought it would be, but Draco relaxed himself with a breath that took out most of the air in his body and responded, "Because you're _friendlier_ to people like that than you are with me. You might trust me, but you don't act like it in public. You don't smile at me the same way." He hesitated, then decided that his not speaking of what bothered him was unlikely to result in any change in Harry. Depending on him to simply know things like pure-blood customs, pure-blood manners, or why his behavior troubled Draco hadn't worked so far. "You barely touch me except when you want to move me somewhere, the way you hauled me down Diagon Alley."

A dull flush swept Harry's cheeks. "I didn't know you wanted me to," he muttered.

Draco laughed despite the fact that he knew the sound would come out ugly, and it did. "How have I not made that clear, Harry? I said--"

"That you wanted to keep courting Laura, and you never mentioned _anything_ when I said that I was attracted to you." Harry moved a step forwards. "When you first talked to me about pure-blood marriage and what it meant to you, you were careful to assure me that we could have other lovers. Yeah, you presented it that way so that I would know I could have children even if I stayed with you, but--Draco, it didn't sound as though you cared about having me in your bed at all."

Draco licked his lips. "I don't think about that all the time as part of marriage," he said. "Of course it's important. Astoria is beautiful. Laura is beautiful."

Harry's mouth twisted.

"No, I didn't mean you aren't," Draco said hastily. He hated the way the conversation kept shifting around on him, as though they stood on land prone to earthquakes. He would think he had made an indisputable point, and then Harry would find some way around it. "I just meant that that wasn't the _most_ important thing about you, that I'd still want you even if I didn't find you attractive."

"But _do_ you, one way or the other?" Harry's eyes were hard.

Draco flushed. "Yes," he mumbled.

Harry sighed softly. "Thank you," he said. "That's not the only thing I wanted to know, but it does reassure me."

Draco half-turned his head away, wishing that he could plunge into the pool nearby to cool the blush on his cheeks, and struck back. "Why are you so insistent that I give up my courtship of Laura if you don't plan to stay in the bond? One minute you hated marriage with me and were ready to conduct that ritual by yourself to sever it, the next moment you hated the idea of giving it up."

*

This one, Harry did know the answer to, but he took a few minutes to think, his eyes locked on Draco's face. He wondered what Draco would think if he knew that he only became more beautiful to Harry when he was dealing with anger or uncertainty. Draco might admire the kind of cold regality that the statues in the Malfoy museum had, or that his mother possessed in such abundance, but Harry preferred the warm, moving beauty that was all around them in the gardens right now. 

And which darted across Draco's face when he didn't remember and actively try to repress it.

"I wanted to be free because I thought--still think--that the marriage bond is twisting us," Harry said. "You less than me, maybe, because you're closer to the traditions that spawned it in the first place, and you might be able to live with it if it never goes away. But it's making me act in weird ways. It's making me say things I wouldn't otherwise say, making me feel things I otherwise wouldn't feel--"

"Like what?" Draco's voice was edged. Harry wondered if he knew that he had shifted one step closer to Harry and was now staring at him as if he expected Harry to break away and run at any second.

"I got hard over you," Harry said. "The other day. And it was over _nothing more_ than thinking about being pressed up against you, lying with you, the way we did after you rescued me from the beast."

Draco stopped breathing. Harry watched his pupils dilate, his face flush again, but this time with more intensity, more hunger, and felt himself beginning to stiffen. 

_Damn it, not now!_ He turned his back and walked over to put a hand on a large iris, bowing his head, hoping that hiding his face would give them both a chance to recover. "That's--I've never had that happen before with a bloke," he said. "I never _wanted_ it to. That must mean the marriage bond changed me in some way. It _has_ to. I was always attracted to women before, and I only dreamed about marrying one and having children."

Draco took a moment or so to respond. Harry thought he was composing himself, but when he responded, his voice still had a raw edge. "Have you considered that the bond is simply revealing new things about you to yourself, instead of conjuring them out of thin air?"

Harry glanced back at him. Draco's eyes glittered like light on water. He had again moved a step closer, and Harry's body tightened, his chest and groin filling with warmth.

"Why?" Harry demanded. "What possible-- _why_ would I be attracted to blokes now when I never was before?"

"You've changed an awful lot in the past few months." Draco's voice was soft, thoughtful. "Between the darkness and what happened to you there, your attempts to recover from it, and the bond. It's possible that you never would have known about this or needed it if you'd never been kidnapped. Perhaps you would have married your Weasley and everything would have happened as you predicted it." His voice roughened again, but Harry didn't think it was with desire, this time.

"Instead," Draco said, with a wave around at the garden that seemed to dismiss it and the Manor, though Harry was sure he didn't mean it to come across that way, " _this_ happened. Have you thought that you may have new aspects of yourself coming to the surface because you need them, because you're in new situations where you can act as you wouldn't have had to otherwise?"

"Then it's not the bond," Harry said. "It's just my _life_ that's fucked up, and fucking me over."

Draco snorted. "I've never seen anyone so determined to think that his life is messed up if it's not going exactly according to plan," he said. "And you didn't answer the rest of my question. If you were so determined to stay out of the bond, you shouldn't have cared who else I wanted to marry. You should have been cheering on any rival you could get. Why do you want me to drop the courtship?"

Harry shut his eyes. He felt only a shade less panic than he had when he thought Narcissa might divine every truth about the Dursleys without him saying anything. This was it. Say it and he couldn't go back.

_What, the way you can't go back now that you've admitted you're attracted to Draco?_

Harry smiled wryly and turned around. Draco still watched him, bright and steady and _brilliant,_ there amid the flowers and the light.

"Because half of me wants out of the marriage bond," Harry said. "And half of me thinks it's already too late, and even if the marriage bond is severed I'll still fall in love with you. I've felt--it's too intense, this stuff. More intense than what I felt for Ginny." It hurt, saying that, and it was also a relief, as though he'd released a tight iron band that had been constricting his breathing. "So I'd like someone who's going to fall in love with me, too. Marriage bond or not. Someone with his heart set on a courtship with a pure-blood woman--two things I won't ever be--can't do that."

*

Draco viciously controlled his immediate reactions, which were to grin and gloat. He doubted that was what his relationship with Harry needed at the moment.

 _Even if it's what_ you _need?_

But no, it wasn't. He needed something else. He felt the deep, shivery desire explode from inside him, flooding his limbs with tingling energy, and began to walk forwards. Harry didn't move, only squinting at him, as if to say that he doubted Draco had the courage to carry this all the way through.

Draco reached him. He reached out and put his hand on Harry's shoulders and tilted his head in. 

And then his own uncertainty froze him as effectively as a bar across his chest.

Harry seemed to realize what was needed, and he smiled. If it had been a mocking smile, then Draco would have done his best to kill him, but it was a smile that simply stretched the corners of his mouth and made him look gentle and lovely and foolish. He leaned in and kissed Draco.

Saliva flooded Draco's mouth, and the iron bar broke. He reached out and tightened his hold on Harry, though he didn't dare move his hands from his shoulders because it could easily result in his touching Harry's scars. He didn't want to do that right now, he didn't want to bring the beast or the darkness into it more than he already had by suggesting that some of Harry's changes resulted from that.

He kissed Harry hard, hard enough to drive his own lips into his teeth. Harry kissed him back, rough and firm and with his own hand confidently gripping the back of Draco's neck, but he wouldn't open his mouth.

With a gasp that sounded loud to his own ears, Draco broke off the kiss and traced his tongue over Harry's mouth, solemnly begging entry. Harry shuddered, and his knees buckled for a moment. Then he sighed and lapped his own tongue out to encounter Draco's, tracing copper and salt around his chin, around the curve of his lips, up to his cheek.

Draco snarled and turned them to the side, trying to find a place where they could sit down or where he could at least press Harry up against something. They were going to lose their balance in a second, but he couldn't break away from the kiss, from the way that their tongues curled against each other like flames of the same fire now, from the heat that followed a second behind the twisting sensation of slickness, from the _hardness_ of Harry against him, ribs and chest and hips and groin.

It was Harry who stopped, pulling back from him with a gasp and a sharp closing of his eyes, as though that had been their primary connection. Draco ran a hand up his flank, hoping he was safely far enough from the scars, trying not to shudder with delight at the look on Harry's face.

"That answer your question about who I'm attracted to?" he asked.

Harry swallowed and nodded. "Yeah," he said. When he opened his eyes again, Draco leaned forwards to watch the shadows darting through them, and the way the pupils darkened the green. Harry jerked his head back a little, again as though this was more intimate than anything else they could have done, and lowered it. "Sorry," he mumbled. "But--does that mean that you'll stay with me if the ritual to sever the marriage bond doesn't work? And give up the courtship?"

Draco lowered his own head. It was hard to make his mind refocus on anything when what he _wanted_ was to find some way of coaxing Harry down to the grass and simply rub off against him. But they had been having an honest discussion before this, and they could be honest with words as well as with bodies.

"I don't want to," Draco said.

Harry flinched as though someone had stabbed him, and stood up straight. "Reckon that answers _that_ question, then," he said brightly.

Draco blinked, then sighed and reached out for him as Harry tried to get away. "No," he said. "I didn't mean that I didn't want to stay with you if the marriage bond endures. I meant that I didn't want to give up my courtship of Laura. Please," he added softly, when Harry continued to study him with bright, suspicious eyes. "You've given me more chances to prove that I'm not the boy you knew in school than I thought you would so far. Can you give me another?"

*

Harry, his body and mind still ringing as though he'd struck stone with steel, watched Draco carefully. He looked more tired than anything else at the moment, though his face was still flushed with hunger, mottled with want.

He looked vulnerable, and that reassured Harry, a bit, because it was how he felt at the moment himself.

"Fine," he said at last, though Draco's first answer had made him want to jerk back and build up the walls again, and still did. _I knew I was wrong to trust him, I knew I was wrong to trust him,_ sang the chant in the back of his head. _He would despise me if I showed him everything, because that's weak and he's never going to yield that much to me. I know he won't._

It was an effort to concentrate on the Draco in front of him instead of the imagined Draco in his head, but he managed, forcing his breathing calm and smooth and even. "All right," he said. "Why don't you want to give up your courtship of Laura?"

Draco smiled and drew him closer, skimming his fingers lightly up and down Harry's sides. Harry squirmed. He was working hard not to pant. Trust Draco to find a place that felt good to touch that _Harry_ hadn't known about.

"Because I'm also afraid of being left alone," Draco said quietly, "with someone I risked everything for not being willing to risk that much for me. Just as you're afraid that you may fall in love with me, broken marriage bond or not. If I can court Laura _and_ you at the same time, I'll have someone to be with if one of those courtships doesn't work. Letting go and committing everything to you sounds--hard."

Harry scowled. "I can understand that," he said. "It doesn't mean I like it."

Draco shifted, and his knee rubbed against the inside of Harry's thigh. He smiled, a smile that seemed to go deeper inside his face than most of them did, at Harry's groan. "Neither do I, after seeing you let go like that and realizing that you might do it with someone else if we don't stay together," he said. "Not nearly as much as I thought."

Harry swallowed and said, "Fine. Another question, then. You'd prefer to go on dating me, or courting me, or however you want to put it, while also courting Laura."

"That's not a question," Draco said, but the deep smile lingered on his face, and he ran another hand down Harry's right side. This time, Harry flinched away as it came too close to the scars, and Draco paused, fingers hovering in the air, smile fading.

Harry tried not to feel bad about that. It probably would have happened with his question, anyway. "I know. But I know it's true, based on what you just said. So. How will you feel if I find someone else to date or court or be with while you're with Laura?"

Draco half-jerked back, then seemed to remember he still had hold of Harry and would pull Harry along with him, and relaxed with a scowl. "I wouldn't like it," he said.

"That's not enough reason not to do it," Harry pointed out, his heart rate slowing now. "Now if the fact that I don't like you courting Laura won't keep you from doing it."

" _Why_ do you want to find someone?" Draco's hands were restless on him, stroking over cloth and sometimes dipping under it as if he could possess Harry by touching him. Harry ignored the flashes of fire that the touches gave him as best he could. He wouldn't let Draco influence, or win, an argument like that.

"Because I still think that it's weird for me to be attracted to blokes, changes or not, marriage bond or not," Harry said. "And I want to figure out whether it's something I need to live with, something permanent, or something temporary and only focused on you. I know a few blokes who've hinted--well, things I never took seriously because I never thought seriously about anyone but Ginny. But two of them are pure-blood and would probably understand this marriage bond possibly getting in the way of anything permanent. I thought I'd go to them and see what they say."

Draco scowled harder. "I don't like it," he mumbled.

"I won't, if you give up your courtship of Laura," Harry said quietly. "I'm not going to force you to do that, but on the other hand, I won't be the only one staying 'faithful' to a bond I never chose."

Draco stared around the garden as if hoping for an answer written there, then relaxed with a loud sigh. "All right," he said. "I'll--you can try. And I'll court Laura, and we'll perform the ritual when we have the ingredients for it, and we'll see if that breaks the marriage bond." He stared at Harry. "What happens if it works?"

"I don't know," Harry said. He felt much calmer and much lighter than he had in weeks. "That'll depend as much on you as on me."

Draco snorted. "Uncertainty," he muttered.

"I know," Harry agreed. "You hate it." He smiled at Draco. "Well?"

Draco looked back at him, shining, and if Harry had been able to give in and trust life as completely as he could six months ago, then he might have said "Fuck it" and told Draco he could have whatever he wanted. But the darkness had happened, and Harry was never going to be that out of control again.

Draco was beautiful. Harry thought he could love him. But that wasn't the same thing as giving everything up for him when he wouldn't promise.

"All right," Draco said, and kissed him again, as if he hoped that would persuade Harry to change the mind.

The kiss wasn't _that_ persuasive, Harry thought as he tilted his head back and opened his mouth to admit Draco's languid tongue. But it came bloody close.


	30. Separate Ways

"Ian! Wait up, would you?"

Harry hoped his voice was casual enough to make Auror Ian Shelborn, walking ahead of him, pay attention but not think he was crazy. Shelborn turned around with a faint smile, dashing his hair out of his eyes. Grey eyes, Harry noted with an internal sigh. It seemed he was doomed to be attracted to them no matter what kind of face they appeared in.

_Things would have been a lot simpler if I could have just stayed attracted to brown eyes and nothing else._

That was true, but it was also irrelevant, because it wasn't happening right now and he would mess up on this delicate talk if he thought too much about it. Harry took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "I have something to talk to you about," he said. "Could we use one of the interrogation rooms?"

Shelborn--no, Harry really should think of him as Ian if they were going to be dating--raised an interested eyebrow. "Something private, hm?" he murmured, and gave Harry a smile that Harry was now allowed to notice was bright and casual and, well, attractive. "Sounds serious."

Harry nodded, trying to ignore the way his mouth dried out, and turned to lead Ian into the room down the corridor. It was the same one he had talked with Ginny in. He also tried to ignore the symbolism, and hope that this time, the relationship discussed here would last.

_Do you want it to last, though, when you're on the verge of falling in love with Draco?_

Harry scowled at himself again. That was the _point._ He didn't know if he could ever make a go of the marriage with Draco because Draco wanted other things and was determined to have them. So he had to hope, at one and the same time, that the relationship with Ian would work and not work.

 _You're allowed to just have ordinary hope,_ he scolded himself then, and turned around to smile at Ian. _Not obsess over the future, not worry over whether your every movement is going to hurt Draco, but just hope that it works out and gives you a bit of fun to have, if you want._

"What is it?" Ian braced himself against the wall beside the door. From what Harry remembered the other times he'd worked with him, it was the standard position he took during interrogations.

Harry sighed. "You know I was dating Ginny Weasley for a while, before I married Malfoy?"

"You _still_ don't call him by his first name?" Ian grinned at him and shook a mocking finger. "Harry, Harry. That's not being very tender and loving to your spouse."

"Yeah, I know," Harry said. "That's part of the point."

Ian blinked, and a more complex expression came over his face, one that Harry hadn't seen before. He straightened up and gave Harry a long, slow glance with some appreciation in it. Harry told himself that it _did_ not make him want to squirm, and instead tried to look back the same way.

He must have done it well enough to convince Ian, because he nodded. "Yes?"

"Malfoy--Draco--and I don't know whether to continue this marriage or not," Harry said. "He's courting a woman he hopes to marry, and--well. I don't want to be left behind, or mocked as someone who can't keep a lover in his bed. Not that we've been lovers," he added, because he thought Ian ought to know that and the man had never been a gossip. "But the public perception of me is stupid enough. I don't want to add to it."

"You're asking me to pose as your lover?" Ian was blinking slowly, as if trying to absorb this information into whatever image of Harry he carried in his head.

"No," Harry said. "Asking you to date me. If you want to," he added, because Ian had flushed.

"Why me?" Ian asked a few minutes later, minutes that played on Harry's nerves like fingers on stretched harp strings.

"Because you're handsome," Harry said, deciding that he might as well go with all the reasons. "Because you're pure-blood, and you understand how things like this marriage bond work, and the ways that people can slide around the edges. Probably better than I do. Draco's agreed to this," he added, because Ian still looked doubtful. "But he's not happy about it."

Ian grimaced and flicked his fingers. "I'm not sure that I'd want Malfoy as an enemy."

"He won't be," Harry said quietly. "Anymore than I'll threaten or attack the woman he's courting. But--I think--I need to know--you flirted with me a few times when I was still with Ginny, right?"

A hint of Ian's normally constant smile returned. "Yes. I'm surprised you recognized it. Straightest of the straight and going to go on being straight until he dies, I thought that was you."

"I think that it's different now," Harry said. "But I want to know for sure. I thought I _was_ straight, that I only liked women. But now I find myself attracted to men, and I don't know _why_. I know that I like you, that I trust you, and that you would let me know if this got too weird for you. Would you like to go out with me?"

Ian examined him attentively for long moments. Then he said, "If you really want this, and you're not doing it just to get back at Malfoy."

Harry shook his head, more convinced than ever now that this had been the right move. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't known someone like Ian, but he did, and he wanted to. "Whether I stay with Draco or not, whether he marries this woman or not, I have to live the rest of my life with _myself_ ," he said. "And I'd really like to know whether I can be with both men and women, or if I've convinced myself that I'm attracted to one man when I'm really not."

"That one man being Malfoy?"

Harry nodded. His mouth was dry, his tongue felt thick and salty, and his blood was beating a savage song in his ears.

Ian considered him again, and this time the gaze was slower, the smile more prominent and more lazy. Harry felt his cheeks heating up and tried not to show how nervous he was, ducking his head a little to hide both his flush and the heartbeat at his throat.

"Hey," Ian murmured, and stepped forwards, waiting until Harry looked at him again. "I wouldn't be embarrassed to date you. I've wanted a chance for years, but I never thought you'd look at me. There'd be pressure from the papers, sure, but I'm prepared for that, given how many times they've interviewed me about some potential suspect or a case that I solved. I know you can handle yourself in battle. And you're right. I'm handsome, you're handsome, we're all handsome together."

Harry's high, nervous laugh was cut off as Ian lowered his head and pressed their lips gently together. Harry gasped, and Ian curled his tongue into Harry's mouth with a neat little flick, in and then out, as if he didn't want to overstay his welcome.

The kiss didn't burn the way the one Harry had shared with Draco did. Nothing probably would, he thought. But he was gasping still, and he felt himself wanting more, the desire to clench his hands around Ian's shoulders and press down and in until he _gave_ Harry that more growing the longer they stood there.

Ian backed off, his eyes half-lidded, licking his lips as if Harry's taste was strong and would linger. " _Nice_ ," he murmured. "Very nice. Malfoy's a fool to let someone like you go." He looked a question at Harry, and Harry could recognize that it was one even through the daze of exhilaration and desire.

Harry swallowed and shrugged. "He still wants a traditional pure-blood marriage," he said. "And I can hardly give him children."

Ian snorted. "There are so many ways that one can get around that nowadays that I don't know why half the people I meet fuss about it. The child will still be of your blood, and magically conceived or not, what does it matter?"

"It wouldn't, to me," Harry said. "But I'm not going to stay with someone to whom I'm only second-best." _I'm not going to stay with someone who's not faithful to me,_ he almost said, but he was being unfaithful at the moment. "Loyalty" meant all sorts of complicated things now that it didn't use to mean.

Ian smiled. "Good. Well, I'm more than happy to get to kiss you, and date you for a little while, and perhaps for a long while if it comes to that." He put a hand on Harry's back and steered him in expertly for another kiss. Harry didn't enjoy this one as much, since his muscles were stiff with hiding the flinch. Ian pulled away and gave him a quizzical glance. "Is something wrong?"

"Scars, on my back," Harry said, glad for the out. "Another one of those cases that I'm not allowed to tell you about." The Head Auror and the Minister had both decided that the cases Harry and Ron worked that had to do with artifacts or traps Voldemort had left behind would remain secrets. It hadn't been meant to serve as a cover for the beast and the darkness, but Harry was glad that he had the excuse. Ian rolled his eyes, mouth drawing tight.

"Sure," he said. "I know how that goes." He recovered his smile again a minute later, studying Harry with a level of interest that made his skin prickle and his hair stand up. It was--he wasn't used to people looking at him like that. Most people wanted to use him or get some advantage from sleeping with him, not just fuck him, and Harry had got good at reading the levels of nuance they put into their gazes. Ian wanted him, and that was it. "Well, that'll make it all the more exciting, since we'll have to have some creative positions in bed if you can't lie on your back."

Harry's shudder this time wasn't from fear or the novelty of seeing someone look at him with desire. Ian's gentle laugh followed him all the way back to the office.

And gave him the strength to explain the situation to Ron. That took most of the afternoon, not because Ron was stupid, but because he couldn't believe Harry really knew what he was doing or what he wanted from this situation. Even when Harry had straightened out all the complexities with him and admitted everything that wasn't someone else's secret, Ron tilted his chair back and shook his head in bewilderment.

"No offense, mate," he said, "but I always took you for someone who would only marry once, only have kids with one person, and stay faithful to them for life."

Harry snorted weakly. Hearing Ron put it like that gave him a better sense of how much had changed--and what he'd lost. "I know, Ron. That's not a surprise. I pictured myself as that person, too."

"What changed?" Ron turned a troubled face to him and studied him as though he could find the answer written on Harry's flesh if he cut him open. "I know you'll say the marriage bond, but that wouldn't change the kind of person you are."

Harry shuddered as he thought of what Hermione had said. "It can change my emotions. It can change the degree of closeness I feel to the Malfoys, or whatever other family I would have married into if someone else had used it. Why not my ideals or what I'm willing to accept in my life?"

"Because _I hate it._ "

Harry started and looked up. Ron was scowling, his fists jammed into the desk. He nodded vigorously when he caught Harry's eye.

"I want you to have free choice, mate," he said. "I want you to have what you _want_. I hate to see you reduced to casually dating people just because Malfoy can't make up his bloody mind to let you out of this."

Harry sighed and shook his head. "Not his fault. It's his father who has the power to set up the forced marriage bond, not him, or we would have been free of it the instant it happened. Or it never would have happened," he had to add, because he couldn't picture the Draco he'd married deciding to use that particular gift, even if he became extremely drunk and one of his friends suggested it.

That made Harry pause, then, and wonder whether he really _was_ the only one the marriage bond had changed. Draco had been haughty at first, disbelieving, mocking Harry for not knowing the way that pure-bloods were expected to behave in such situations. He had accepted the bond more easily from the beginning than Harry had, so his changes had been hidden, but...

 _That only means that we_ have _to make the ritual work. Draco deserves to have what he chooses, too. Once the bond is gone, then we'll be able to see more clearly what that is and what was only the bond making him choose things that would continue it and support the family._

"Harry!" Ron snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. Harry started and nearly fell off his perch on the desk. "You do that a lot lately," Ron complained. "Go off into your head and stop paying attention to what's around you."

Harry smiled wryly at him. "Yeah, I know," he said. "Draco's complained of it, too." Then he paused to enjoy the small spectacle of Ron spluttering because he shared some traits with a _Malfoy_.

"Is it--what you went through?" Ron asked, lowering his voice as if the beast might burst through a wall at being mentioned.

Harry appreciated the sentiment, actually. It was the way that he tended to feel about the beast himself. "Some of it, but not the whole thing," he said. "My life's changed, and it keeps changing. I keep trying to put it in order, but meanwhile, the next life-changing thing is trying to catch my attention."

Ron nodded in sympathy. "As long as you know what you're doing, mate, and you get free or date two people or end up in an orgy if that's what you want," he said. "We should get back to talking about the Ness case."

Harry blew out his breath and nodded. "Yeah, we should," he said. He did still want to catch the wizards responsible for the three months of hell he'd endured and the scars on his back, and he experienced a stabbing moment of dismay that he'd thought of them as less important than the marriage and the shit that surrounded it.

_But maybe that's what I need right now. Maybe that's healthy. I'm going on about the business of living, not cowering in a corner of my room and reliving the nightmares over and over the way I was that first month._

He shook the thoughts off with the ease of long practice and picked the file up from Ron's desk. "What do we have?"

*

_Condition: To bear no more than three children and no less than two into the marriage._

Draco raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair. He was studying the list of conditions to their marriage and amendments to his first terms that Laura had sent him. He had to admit that she was being more creative and argumentative than he had expected, and that meant she was keeping his interest.

_The way that Harry does._

Draco rolled his eyes at himself and moved on down the list. At least this part was different from his relationship with Harry: there was no way that he would be talking to Draco about how many children he should bear.

_Reasoning: you say that you want only one child, so as to leave the line of Malfoy inheritance clear. I have observed the children raised as only heirs in the branches of my family, and they are inevitably the most arrogant and self-satisfied ones. Besides, if they die, the family is left floundering, with aged parents most often too lost in grief or too old to try for the task of having or adopting another child._

_Two children will both give us an extra heir and teach our children that they are not the only important ones in our lives. They will learn the virtues of cooperation and sharing early on. They will have to negotiate, challenge, answer challenges, and fight instead of growing up spoiled by utter luxury. Their personalities will be formed in new ways and take new turns that they would not if they were only meeting challenges, or challengers, later in life._

_No more than three children are required to teach these lessons, and more than three would interfere in my business._

Draco closed his eyes and tapped a finger against his teeth. He could argue against Laura's points, he thought. _He_ had not grown up spoiled by utter luxury because he was his parents' only child.

Of course, it had taken the war to break him of the other spoiling that had resulted, and he knew that there were times he had longed for siblings. Which was worse, to want them and be deprived of them, or to have them and wish they would go away? Draco would not want either fate for his children.

If he and Harry had children, either through other women or adopted children sealed into the Malfoy family by magic...

Draco sighed irritably. He refused to consider the prospect seriously when Harry might not stay with him. He wanted someone who actually _wanted_ to be part of the family, not someone who kicked against that yoke with all the strength in him.

He considered the letter that he would write, reaching for his ink and parchment in the meantime. He would have to respond to Laura's points with ones as calm and reasoned in tone, and that meant his mindset should be focused only on her and what she offered to the family.

_Impossible._

Draco sighed again and rose from the chair. Yes, it was impossible at the moment. He would take a turn in the gardens, and remember the kiss that he and Harry had shared yesterday, and perhaps when he returned inside he would be in a better mood.

He opened his door, and paused. Something, some unusual presence or absence of noise, warned him about what was waiting for him before he took a single step. 

"Hello, Lucius," he said neutrally. His father's whistling breath came from the other side of the door. "What did you hope to achieve by lurking here and waiting for me to emerge?" Draco continued, opening the door and studying his father's face. Lucius stood to one side where he would not easily be seen, and while he had no weapon openly held in his hand, Draco knew that that sometimes meant next to nothing, with Lucius. "Tell me what you want, and if it is within my power and reasonable for you to demand, I'll give it to you. Otherwise, leave."

"Draco," Lucius said. "I have come to ask you three questions. Your answers to them will determine what I do next."

Draco tried to still the trembling flutter of fear in his stomach. For years, Lucius had commanded him and ordered his life in different ways. That didn't mean that Draco absolutely had to listen to him when he used that tone, but it meant that he was struggling against the force of long habit when he tried not to.

"Why should I answer any of your questions?" he asked, trying for the same deceptive mildness that had come so easily to him just a minute ago. "There have been certain disagreements between us that make honest speech, and trust, impossible."

Lucius ignored him, looking like the stern patriarch and judge that Draco remembered presiding over his childhood. How much of that had been illusion and how much reality, he didn't know if he would ever realize. It was much easier to identify the gaps that Lucius had deliberately left in his reading and education than to locate the times that he had been lying to his son through appearances. "The first question," he said. "Have you given up on all chances of having a traditional marriage?"

"What do you mean by that?" Draco asked. "A marriage where I am compatible with my spouse and can strengthen the family? Or a marriage that obeys the customs and expectations of our peers?"

"I mean it in all the ways that it is possible to mean it," Lucius said, and then gave Draco one of those intense, hard-to-combat looks. 

Draco gritted his teeth against the temptation to cower or answer honestly, and shook his head. "Not for me, Lucius. I know that it means more than one thing now, and I also know that there is more than one way to have children."

Lucius did nothing more than blink before he moved on. "The second question. Do you believe that Potter contributes more to this family than he takes away?"

" _Harry_ \--remember that you took his surname yourself--hardly takes anything from us," Draco said. "He sleeps in his rooms, but does nothing else in them, and acts as if our food is hardly good enough." He thought he kept the bitterness out of his voice, but Lucius still smiled as if he had scored a victory.

"Your time, your attention," Lucius murmured. "He takes those. Are they not valuable?"

Draco smiled. "Of course they are. Too valuable to waste on _you_." He started to step around his former father, but Lucius matched him, step for step, and one thing Draco would not allow to happen was any opponent to think that he would get flustered or upset around him. He halted and yawned in Lucius's face. His cheek twitched, but he controlled himself for the most part.

"The third question," Lucius said. "Do you think it matters that you are falling in love with Potter, or can you find someone else to feel lust and appreciation for?"

Draco blinked at him. "If you think I am falling in love with _Harry_ ," he said, "then it would be news to him. And me."

Lucius nodded. His face had a faint, subtle glow, as though he'd discovered a way that he could redeem himself and get back into the good graces of the family. Draco could think of no other reason for him to look like that. But he knew, if Lucius did not, that nothing would make him change his mind.

"You have reminded me," Lucius said, "that doing something for the good of the family means doing something for the good of _all_ Malfoys, not for one member of them. It was a valuable lesson. Thank you, son." He gave a little bow to Draco and turned away with a small nod, as though he assumed that Draco would let it go at that.

But Draco realized that he _had_ to clench his teeth and let it go, unless he wanted to demean himself and the family by scrambling after someone exiled from it. He nodded coldly to the air where Lucius had stood and strode out to the gardens.

Well, he had a distraction from the problem of Harry, though it did not clear his mind or settle his emotions so he could write back to Laura in the way he had hoped the gardens might.


	31. Crossed Swords

"How did the interview with your date go?"

Harry started and looked up from the tray he had spread across his lap, the better to avoid eating dinner with Narcissa and Draco. Draco stood in the door of his bedroom, his arms folded, his spine held as if lounging against the doorway would be the height of grossness. His eyes, bright grey and filled with icy fire, never wavered from Harry's face. Harry waited a little, out of morbid curiosity, and sure enough, he never blinked.

"It wasn't an interview, as such," Harry said, and forced himself to turn back to the beef roast in front of him. The house-elves had tried to foist something that they called lark's tongue on him, and Harry had sent it back, hoping fervently that it wasn't _actually_ the tongue of some defenseless bird. At least they knew how to prepare ordinary food, too. "It was a conversation. I told him what was going on, and he agreed that he'd like to date me."

"What's his name?" Draco might think he was making that question casual. Harry knew him too well not to feel the breathing weight of resentment behind it.

"Ian Shelborn," Harry said, and took a defiantly large bite of the meat, looking up to capture Draco's gaze.

Draco glanced aside, as if having Harry stare back _this_ time was too much for his delicate little nerves. "Never heard of him," he said.

Harry shrugged. "He's pure-blood. I wouldn't have approached him if I wasn't sure of that, because I think most people who aren't pure-blood would think this marriage is a sham and a farce, and we don't need to deal with that."

Draco glanced at him and showed his teeth. "No need to include _me_ in your dealings with Shelborn. I'm obviously not going to be there even in spirit, am I?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "You had the chance to stop this, Draco. You wouldn't. I'm not ever going to allow anyone to have that level of power over me again. If you get to date someone else, so do I."

Draco shook his head. "That isn't _comparable_ ," he said. "I'm seeking out Laura because I have a duty to my family to make the kind of marriage that they need to survive. If I can't have it with you, which is what I most _want_ , then I'll need it with someone else. But you're seeking Shelborn out because of this need for fairness that you have. Not the same thing at all."

Harry shut his eyes for a minute. He was actually glad that he was sitting down with the tray of food across his lap, because if he'd been standing he might have stalked over to Draco and hit him. And that probably wouldn't be very productive either for the future peace of their marriage, assuming it endured, or for the ritual that they would need to do together.

"Draco," he said. "Listen to yourself."

"I _was_ ," Draco said, and he sounded sulky for the first time in several days. "I said that I'll need a marriage no matter what, whereas you don't _need_ to find another bloke to date, you're only doing it because you want to."

"That's not the same thing," Harry breathed. "Once again, your traditions are more important to you than my needs. I told you everything about the beast and what it did to me, and you _still_ have no idea. My needs still can't compare to yours." He opened his eyes and looked at Draco, glad that he could be calm now.

Draco took a step backwards. Well, maybe "calm" was an exaggeration. But Harry still didn't stand up and attack as he spoke, and he felt he deserved some sort of reward for that. "Which is fair. You can feel that way. But in that case, we're right back where we were, valuing only what belongs to us, with no understanding of the objections the other person might have."

"I don't understand what the beast has to do with this." Draco was attempting casual and failing, badly. If he had been a suspect under interrogation, Harry would have said that he was definitely guilty, or at least hiding someone who was. He tried to stand up straight, tried to project a veneer of confidence, but it wavered and cracked in the middle, and his voice sank. Perhaps he thought he'd be able to disguise his emotions better with a softer tone of voice. "You haven't explained that, just thrown words around and assumed I should know."

Harry quelled his immediate angry reaction. It was possible. Not likely, when he had thought Draco knew more of his secrets than anyone, but possible. He might have misinterpreted the way that Draco looked at the scars on his back and even the way he tried to touch them, as if he _knew_...

He banished the thoughts and spoke as neutrally as possible. "I couldn't do anything to rescue myself for three months. The food I ate, the water I drank, even the movements I made were all controlled by that beast. The only way I managed to break free was by doing something horrible enough that it left me with the beast _in_ me, uncontrollable. You've seen me lose control twice since we married because I was reliving those memories, and when I do, my magic lashes out to defend me in the same way."

Draco nodded. He actually did seem to be listening. Harry was gloomily unsure that it would make any difference in the end, but he went on speaking.

"I'm never going to be helpless like that again. Never. I'm going to make sure that I can control my memories, and if I can't do that, at least I can control the way my magic reaches for other people. That was why--" He closed his eyes. He had to say this, but that didn't mean he had to look at Draco while he did it. "That was why I was so badly off after I killed those wizards who kidnapped us. The darkness, too, and the trauma of going through the memories again, but also _killing_ them like that, eating them when I had promised it would never happen again."

There came a hesitant, shuffling sound like Draco easing forwards a step. "You didn't have a choice. You know that they would have killed us if they had the chance. They were talking about feeding us to another beast, or maybe using us to summon one, when I heard them."

"That doesn't matter," Harry said. "What matters is that I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't destroy living, breathing people like that again, no matter who they were, and then I _did_."

"I'm sorry, Harry." For the first time in the conversation, Draco sounded like the person Harry had thought he knew, the man who had taken care of him after their encounter with the decay wizards. "I honestly didn't know that. Or--I think I caught the edges of it, but assumed it was you blaming yourself for more that isn't your fault."

Harry snorted bitterly. "Believe me, I don't like the guilt complex any more than you do. I wish I was better at ignoring it. But that isn't something I promised myself I would do, unlike the others."

Draco settled on the edge of the bed, from the noise of the sheets, and said, "And you've decided that waiting for me to figure out whether I want you or Laura, or even waiting until the ritual works, would be losing control of your life?"

Harry opened his eyes and nodded. "From the beginning, neither of us could control the marriage bond or the restrictions it imposed on us," he said. "And then you decided to court this other person. Fine. I have to be able to do the same thing, or it's too much like being left in the darkness again, with a chain that I didn't choose on me." He flashed a sharp grin at Draco. "You know, if you really don't want me dating Ian, then you could just let me perform the ritual by myself, and that would count, for me, the same as you courting Laura."

Draco tightened his jaw. "Not the same thing. I don't want to see you get _killed,_ which you could if you did the ritual on your own without proper preparation. Idiot," he added, because apparently his opinion wasn't strong enough already.

Harry rolled his eyes. "And to me, watching you date Laura and not being able to do anything in response, watching you move into a new life while I'm still trapped in this bond that I _didn't choose,_ also hurts. Maybe not as much as the ritual going wrong, but it still does. All right, Draco? You don't have to share my feelings as long as you understand the way I feel."

Draco stared at him. Then he said, "But that's--personal."

"Yes?" Harry asked coolly. "Are you going to tell me that your fear of giving up Laura is somehow less personal?"

Draco flushed. "No! I meant--it's personal feelings against traditions. Traditions that have kept my family going for centuries. Traditions that I was raised to respect. Traditions--"

"That you've admitted you didn't know everything about, thanks to your father keeping things from you." Harry looked at him, seeking some sign of enlightenment in his face, finding none. "Haven't you thought that there are things worth questioning there, too, not just the way that forced marriages have been handled?"

Draco lifted his head and clenched his jaw. "These traditions matter to me in the same way that choosing your own life matters to you," he said.

"Fine," Harry said. "Then we're back at the same impasse. You have to do certain things because of your traditions. I have to do certain things because of my own psychological needs. Maybe we'll end up together, maybe not, but I resent the implication that what you want to do is natural and understandable and indisputably correct, and what I want to do _isn't._ "

Draco winced. "I didn't really mean to imply that," he muttered. "But I was always told that one individual doesn't matter next to the good of the family as a whole. That means that I have to be willing to sacrifice the things I'd like to have if the family demands something different."

Harry snorted. "Who's demanding something different? You're attracted to me. Your mother would be just as happy if I stayed married, I think. Who is it you're trying to serve, but the concept of the Malfoy family in your own head, which doesn't really exist outside it?"

Draco shook his head. "There's still a more abstract concept of the family, the good we need to consider."

" _Fine_ ," Harry said.

Draco frowned at him. "You keep saying that."

"Because that's the point we keep arriving at." Harry leaned back, though not far enough to bring his scars into contact with cloth, and closed his eyes. "You make good points about what you want being necessary. I make good points about why I need the things I need. So we'll both go on as we were, with me dating Ian and you courting Laura and us preparing for the ritual, and one way or another we'll both have what we need."

Draco didn't say anything. Harry opened his eyes and found him as tight as a drawn bow.

"I know what you want," Harry whispered. "You want me to admit that my needs aren't as important as yours, that personal needs aren't the same as traditions, right?"

"I would never ask you for that." Draco looked upright and haughty now.

"But you implied it," Harry said. "When you stared at me as if it was impossible that I would feel differently from you." He felt very tired, and sort of disbelieving. It was hard to accept that Draco, who had been a refuge for him from the decay wizards and the evil memories, was now becoming someone he had to avoid because he made him weary. "So. We've accepted that we both understand the other's standards but don't share them, right? That's what this conversation was about?"

*

Draco wanted to say that of _course_ the conversation was about more than that. They were married. They had reason to trust each other. They should be able to speak of their deepest desires and not fear that the other would reject them for feeling them.

But Harry's eyes were calm in that way they only attained when he felt he was right--not a common occurrence since he had admitted the truth about the scars to Draco. And his hand, which had been clenched on the edge of the tray, relaxed now and dangled at his side.

"You look happy with this," Draco said bitterly.

Harry laughed at him, and there was a boiling undertone to the sound that at least convinced Draco he felt more than he looked like he felt. " _What_? You really think that I am? What would make me happiest was if I knew whether I was attracted to blokes or just you, and you gave up the courtship of Laura, and we could explore that together."

"But you won't accept that your attraction to me is something that comes from you, not the marriage bond changing you," Draco said.

"And you won't accept that you don't need Laura because, whether or not I stay with you, you can court her later." Harry's gaze met his, calm and unblinking again. _Calm because he's faced with opposition,_ Draco realized. _He's always fought, all his life, for everything he wants or needs. You're not going to win over him by sheer struggle, or thinking you can wear him down._

"It would be hard to open up a courtship later," Draco said, hating the way that the words stumbled off his tongue instead of flowing. "She would be insulted that I had broken off the first one. And there's no other pure-blood woman I can see myself accepting or being comfortable with."

Harry nodded, looking unsurprised. "So we continue as we were." He turned back to finish his meal.

Draco stood up and stared down at him. Harry showed no hesitation in meeting his eyes. There was no guilt there, Draco realized. There _was_ unhappiness. But Harry didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

He _wasn't_.

Except for the squirming, rioting jealousy in Draco's gut that said he was, of course.

"I wish this could change," Draco found himself whispering, with more passion than he had meant to put behind the sound. "I wish that we could be content with each other, and nothing more."

Harry's eyes softened. "I wish that, too," he said. "But I've told you what the conditions are for that."

Draco shook his head. "I wish there were no conditions."

Harry's expression cooled again. "Of course you do," he said. "Because you want to know that I would fall in love with you and wait for you no matter what, no matter what happens with Laura or whether you ever decide that you want me enough to commit back to me." He shook his head. "Once, I could have done that. But the man who could have died when the beast ate him."

"I didn't mean that."

"Then what did you mean?"

Draco shook his head again, driven to the brink of speechlessness. This just wasn't--he didn't want what Harry was accusing him of. He didn't want to be free to court anyone while Harry was bound to him.

He thought.

He just wanted Harry to _understand,_ to understand why the courtship was so valuable to Draco, why it was high past time that he was married and doing something to enrich the Malfoy family vaults with Galleons, as well as the house with children.

_I don't think that you could enrich them much further than by marrying one of the most wealthy men in the wizarding world, one who didn't even use most of his money because he was holding it in trust for his children._

Draco closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair. The problem was, the answers to his questions actually just shoved him further back into a state of paralysis. He wanted both, the marriage to Laura with all the children and the traditions and the silent, instinctive understanding of some concepts that he could never explain to Harry that it entailed, and he wanted the marriage to Harry with the passion and love and trust that it would give him. He didn't know how to choose between them.

"Go lie down for a while, Draco." Harry's voice was gentle again. "Or sit and think. Do whatever you need to get your head in order. You look terrible."

Draco opened his eyes and gave Harry a wry smile. "We seem to exchange roles," he said. "When I get less desperate, you get more desperate. And as it drains out of you, it seems to come back to me."

"It's a balance I would do a lot to get out of," Harry agreed.

Draco wanted to respond to the promise in his smile, wanted to reach out...

But he couldn't do that without giving up one of the things he wanted.

He turned and stumbled out of Harry's room, aiming for his. He knew what he felt like at the moment, and luckily there was no reason to contradict himself over _this_ particular desire. He would send the elves for the most potent Firewhisky in the cellars and drink himself into a stupor.

*

"Harry. I would appreciate if you would join me for breakfast this morning."

Harry, about to escape out the door with a final smoothing of his Auror robes, turned around and blinked at Narcissa. She stood in the doorway that led to the dining room, her pale blue robes hanging about her as if they wouldn't dare do anything else, her eyes narrowed. The words had been a command compared to her usual level of subtle maneuvering, Harry thought wryly. Well, he reckoned he could understand that. She probably wanted to lecture him for what he had done to her son.

Not that it would make Harry change his mind. Narcissa was much stronger than he had ever dreamed, more clever and more interested in his welfare, but there were certain things about him that he wouldn't alter for anyone. And pining for Draco while he chased someone else was an unacceptable course of action.

Still, he followed her into the dining room and sat at the far end of the table while the house-elves brought the dishes in. Scones, at least five different kinds of melon, chunks of fresh pineapple swimming in their own juice, delicate slices of ham scattered among scrambled eggs, milk that foamed like beer...Harry shook his head helplessly over it even while he chose some of the melon and a scone.

"You do not approve of us having this much to eat?"

Narcissa's voice was deceptively mild. Harry looked up at her and started to open his mouth to answer, but she gestured for him to eat first. Harry took a few bites of the scone to soothe her before he replied. "It seems excessive, is all. You can have plenty of things for everyone to eat without such a wide choice."

"We have the money to afford it," Narcissa said. "If we did wish to give food away, there are few who would accept it from us. What should we do, Harry, to satisfy your sensibilities?"

"Is this going to be about Draco?" Harry asked. He was tired of subtlety that was only used to manipulate him into doing things he didn't want. "I've told him my terms for a marriage, and he's told me the same things. We've talked about it over and over again. I would really prefer that he deal with it himself than rely on his mother to coax me."

Narcissa's eyes narrowed, but Harry thought it was with amusement and not anger. "No, Harry. Not that. I simply wish to understand you better. You rarely eat our food. You would have slept in a less comfortable bed than the one we gave you. I could understand disdain springing from our actions during the war and what we were to you, particularly during those first days of the marriage bond when you did not choose to be here. But you are past that point now, and you continue to flinch from our gifts. Why?"

Harry hesitated. But being honest with Draco had felt good, even if it couldn't move them past the point they were stuck at. Being honest with Narcissa stood at least a chance of accomplishing the same thing.

"I think it's excessive," he said. "I feel--there's too many choices. I like simple things. Simple breakfasts, and simple spaces where I can be alone. It's not that I hate having a big fireplace because there are other people freezing in Cornwall or something like that. But _I_ don't need it. A smaller fireplace would give me just as much heat. And I'm holding my money in trust for my children, I think I told you. So I don't want to dip into my vaults to buy something I don't _need_."

Narcissa sat up as though someone had rung a bell near her head. "I think I begin to see," she said. "Yes, I do. You want what you think you should need. You are not as committed to punishing yourself as I thought."

Harry smiled back at her and took a bite of melon. "No. Not a masochist. Risking my life doesn't fall into the same category, no matter _what_ some people think."

"But what you might desire," Narcissa said, "what you might dream of, you cut that out of your life."

Harry squirmed. He reckoned that had to be true, just based on what he'd said before, but hearing it phrased like that bothered him. "Not all the desires," he said. "Just the ones that would make other people suffer if I tried to fulfill them. I'm not a sadist, either."

"Who suffers if you have more food at breakfast?" Narcissa whispered. "Who suffers if you sleep in a safe bed at night, if you have a large fire, if you have a house-elf devoted to serving you? Tell me."

"The house-elf would suffer, in the last case," Harry retorted.

"I will give you books to read on them that might clarify matters," Narcissa said, neatly cutting off that avenue of escape. "As for the rest? Who do they cost?"

" _You_ ," Harry said, surprised that she couldn't see that. _Draco would have got it at once._ "You're paying money that you wouldn't have had to pay if I wasn't here. I don't want to be a--a burden." The word the Dursleys had used so often, the word he never wanted to hear again applied to him, and it seemed the best way to avoid that (other than avoiding the Dursleys) was making sure he didn't have excessive wants.

"We are happy to pay the money," Narcissa said. "A family is worth more than Galleons."

"With all Draco's talk of getting a rich wife, I don't think so," Harry muttered, and stabbed at his melon.

"Consider this," Narcissa said. "Your combined vaults under the marriage bond bring more money to use than any bride Draco can marry."

"Children--"

"There are other ways."

"Someone pure-blood," Harry said desperately. "I know Draco wants that."

"Ah." Narcissa sat back and studied him. "If Draco is foolish enough not to realize that passion and loyalty and happiness are worth more than purity of blood--because those qualities of loyalty to the family and happiness in dwelling with the family are the primary reasons that our marriages were restricted to pure-bloods in the past--then there is nothing I can do. But I pray that _you_ will not be unhappy. Do more of what you want, Harry. I would like you to."

After that, there seemed nothing else to say. Harry hastily finished his breakfast and escaped the house with an apologetic mumble. What else could he say? It seemed--

It sounded like--

It sounded like Narcissa wasn't trying to bind him further into marriage with Draco, but was giving him her blessing to escape if he wasn't getting what he wanted.

It was as though she cared more about him than about the future of the family.

It was weird. Harry knew it couldn't be true.

It hurt.


	32. Within the Circle

"I think we finally have a lead."

Harry smiled in cautious hope when he heard Ron's words. They were the kind of thing he had thought about hearing for what seemed like months, but now, with the pain stirred up by Narcissa's words and Draco's stubbornness circling within him, he couldn't feel as deeply about them as he wanted. "Yeah?" he asked, and hoped that Ron would accept the lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

Ron peered at him for a second, then shrugged in what looked like resignation and nodded. "Yeah," he said. "There's a witch called Elisa Grayson that we've been watching for a while, because we thought she was connected to kidnappings of other prominent figures." His eyes were gentle as he looked at Harry, and Harry stiffened his shoulders and stared back. Ron flicked a finger, apparently dismissing the need to argue about whether Harry's disappearance had been a kidnapping or not, and continued. "Someone smelled magic that fit the description you provided outside her house the other night. She wouldn't answer a few questions about it and acted shifty, so she's been brought in."

"Can you _do_ that?" Harry asked, a bit suspiciously. "If they don't actually have a crime to arrest her on--"

Ron grinned. "The trainee who arrested her noted that she hasn't been cleaning up after her Crup, which you're supposed to do ever since a bunch of kids got sick from Crup shit last year."

Harry chuckled. "Good." He began to pace back and forth, running his hands over his shoulders and trying to reassure himself mentally. They had Grayson, and she might lead them to others. At least some of the nightmares he had might be put to bed soon.

Ron watched him, then, trying for an elaborately casual tone that didn't quite come off, asked, "How's the family, then?"

Harry sighed. "Malfoy--Draco, that is--is being stubborn." He didn't think he could tell Ron all the details of Draco's courtship in case there was something he wanted to keep private, and in any case, Ron was nodding, apparently in sympathy with _that_ particular experience. Harry smiled slightly at him and went on. "And his mother is confusing me. She acted at first like there was nothing more important than the Malfoys and I should be grateful to be married into them, and now she's acting as though--I don't know, as though she cares about me and supports my right to make my own decisions."

Ron blinked a few times. "That's good," he said. "Isn't it?" He sounded like someone who had just realized that the branch holding him wasn't as sturdy as he'd thought.

"It hurts," Harry said simply. "And I don't even know why."

Ron hesitated, then came around the desk and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "I'm sure it'll work out," he mumbled. "You know that if you need to talk to me and Hermione, we're here?"

Harry nodded. Ron opened his mouth to say something else, and the office door opened. Ian stood framed in it, looking briefly at Ron before his grey eyes focused on Harry. His smile was warm, and Harry smiled back with no effort at all.

_So much less effort than it would take with Draco, where all the gestures we make have this weight of history behind them._

"Harry?" Ian said, slowly, like someone savoring the name. "They brought Grayson in. They've told me to fetch you." From the edge to his voice, he knew that the woman might have something to do with the secret case Harry had hinted about to him yesterday, if not what.

"Thanks," Harry said, and clapped Ron's shoulder, bringing him up out of the chair. As he passed Ian, Ian's hand clasped his arm. Harry halted, looking up at him. Ian's hair was deep brown, touched with a hint of grey, and it hung in his eyes as he stooped down and gave Harry a kiss on the cheek. 

"Luck," he whispered.

Harry watched him in wonder. Ian looked back, kindly, steadily, as though this was nothing remarkable and lovers did plenty of things like this every day.

_They do, when they're not as screwed-up as Draco and me._

Harry swallowed down the lump in his throat and kissed him back, on the lips this time. He could be bold, too, when he wasn't living with someone whose every move he had to worry about, and the look of wonder in Ian's eyes when he drew back was worth it.

"Thanks," he whispered, and led the way out of the office, trying to ignore Ron's complicated silence behind him. They didn't have time to discuss this right now, not if they were going to be in the right mood to interrogate Grayson.

*

"You seem distracted, Draco."

Draco smiled at Laura and lifted the cup of tea to his lips, wishing that she wasn't as bloody observant as she sometimes was. "Am I?" he asked. "My apologies. I was contemplating our future and the many twists and turns it could take."

The words were ones guaranteed to soothe, and Laura relaxed, nodded, and picked up a stack of parchment that lay in front of her. "Now, this is the chart I drew up of our business holdings. Many of them should remain in our separate names, of course, but there are some it may prove profitable to combine."

Draco obediently bent his head to the parchment. They were sitting over a small, intimate table in Laura's office, and this close, he could easily smell the scrubbed-clean scent of her skin and hair. Laura's fingers tapped and sped over the parchment, and he could watch them, the neatly pointed nails, the slight flash of dark polish on them, and know just from looking at them how incredibly sophisticated she was. Everything about her was different from Harry: polished where Harry was uncouth, full of dark understanding where Harry would scoff, thinking of the consequences of her actions where Harry would be thinking of ways to put them off for as long as possible.

Draco found it difficult to listen to her, to want her. His mind was on what Harry might be doing right now with this Shelborn bloke he'd found; his finger was, more often than not, on his wedding ring.

Would he _know_ if Harry slept with Shelborn? As far as Draco knew, it was never the kind of thing the rings had been designed to track. He would know if Harry was in danger, yes. The ring had warned him of that so far when they were fighting the beast in Harry's back and when Harry was about to conduct the ritual by himself. But that wasn't the same thing.

Would he know if Shelborn pressed Harry back against the wall, murmuring against his mouth as he kissed him, running his fingers over the scars? Harry might give him permission, at that, because Shelborn wasn't someone he had a long and fraught history with. Or he might look on, glassy-eyed, as Shelborn sank to his knees and took his cock in his...

"You are _not attending_."

Laura's voice snapped into the building anger in Draco's gut like a volcano into the middle of a hurricane. He gritted his teeth and glanced at her. Laura leaned back in her seat and reached for her own teacup as if it would provide a shield. Her free hand had dropped beneath the table to rest on her wand.

"I'm sorry if I'm distracted," Draco said through gritted teeth, not even trying to make his voice the sweet and polished thing that he knew his mother would say it should be. _Screw what should be. I want to screw Harry._ "I had an argument with my husband last night, and the effects linger."

"Ah, yes." Laura raised an eyebrow. "Do you know, Draco, I think I would like to meet with your husband."

Draco blinked. "Why?" he asked, honestly surprised. "I can assure you that he doesn't know anything about business, Muggle or otherwise, and he couldn't offer you an opinion on how it should work between us."

"Seeing him would let me know more about your marriage," Laura said. "And your first marriage is still an obstacle to ours. I always like to feel out my business partners, to understand them better. If the marriage with you is such an arrangement, inevitably, Potter--excuse me, Harry Malfoy--is one of those who is involved whether he understands the ramifications of the whole thing or not."

Draco breathed out slowly. "All right," he said. He could see, put like that, why she would desire such a meeting, although he couldn't predict how Harry would react. "I'll ask him. So far, he hasn't liked the idea."

Laura cocked her head. "Why? Does he want to stay married to you?"

Draco tried to make a single, wordless gesture that would take in the whole tangled mess of what lay between him and Harry, but Laura kept watching him as though that didn't suffice, and perhaps it didn't. "I don't know," he whispered. "He doesn't understand everything about pure-blood traditions. No, scratch that, he understands _nothing_ about them. And he doesn't want to learn. I have to have someone by my side who knows them." He looked Laura in the eye.

Laura only smiled back, humming under her breath, a gesture that denied him a straight answer. Draco was forced to go on, to try to explain this to someone outside the family and not have it sound completely mad.

"But he thinks that a marriage should be the romantic stereotype, full of glory and loyalty to one another and love and passion and all that shit." Draco shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. "I don't think he would even let me have children with someone else, if we stayed married. And I have to have children. Heirs. He's not--he doesn't understand that."

"Yes, I want to meet him."

Draco stared at her. "Are you sure? I don't think he could be civil. He'd probably insult you to your face, and I don't want a struggle between your family and mine."

"I wouldn't consider it an insult if I could learn what he feels, and what I'd have to do to placate him," Laura said easily. She had taken her hand off her wand and was sipping her tea, regarding Draco with what he felt sure was quiet amusement. "I wouldn't have begun the marriage negotiations in the first place if I didn't intend to wed you, Draco. It's always good to understand the competition."

Draco's ring buzzed, probably in response to his own strong emotions. He rubbed a finger over it, and it quieted. "If you hurt him," he began.

Laura laughed in what sounded like delight. "I recognize that 'tear you limb from limb' gleam in your eyes. My mother used to look like that when someone threatened to take my father from her." She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. "I hope that you will feel something like that for me someday."

Draco gave a brittle smile back. It was what he wanted, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought it might _not_ be what he wanted.

But the ultimate dream fantasy, a Harry who understood all about pure-blood tradition and would let him do what he needed to do without fear or jealousy, was out of his reach. That meant he should marry Laura, a witch who found the idea that Harry might be angry at her merely amusing.

The ring buzzed again. Draco stared down at it, and let his fingers move away from it. The bands that he and Harry had added, the platinum and the steel and the bronze, were all shimmering, and the ring rose briefly above his finger before falling back, as if it would hover through the air and lead him somewhere. Draco surged to his feet, nearly upsetting the table. Laura rescued it, staring at him with narrowed eyes.

"What is it?" she snapped.

"Harry is in danger." Draco turned his head from side to side, holding the ring up so that he could get some better sense of the distance and direction. The other times this had happened, Harry had been nearby, and it was fairly easy to reach him. This time, he could be almost anywhere in Britain if he'd been sent out on a new case. "I don't--"

The ring began to buzz again, and radiate a heat that felt as if it would burn his fskin. Draco clutched his hand to himself, grimacing. The heat began to spread up his finger in sharp lines, and Draco cursed and snatched his wand. 

"I'm sorry, I have to go," he babbled to Laura, who was watching him with wide eyes but a cloak of calmness already settling on her. "I have to make sure that he's not in danger. We still have the rings binding us together, we're still a married couple--"

And then the buzzing stopped. Draco stared downwards, and found that the shining of the bands he and Harry had added to the ring had stopped as well. Once again, the marriage band lay there on his finger, a fairly ugly piece of jewelry, but not one that would cause most people to look twice unless they knew who he was. Draco shook his head in confusion. As far as he knew, the ring didn't do things like that. The only reason the buzzing should have stopped was if Harry was dead, and in that case the ring would have snapped in half and fallen from his hand.

_Unless that's only another superstition about forced marriage bonds instead of something that does actually happen._

Draco swallowed through the fear-tightness of his throat, and nodded at Laura, holding out his arm. "You wanted to meet Harry? Here's your chance. We're going to the Ministry."

*

It had happened fast enough that Harry barely knew she had moved before he was in the thick of it.

He stepped into the interrogation room that held Grayson. She was a slender woman with hair dyed blue who sat holding her head in her hands so that he couldn't see her face. Two Aurors stood on either side of her, their wands aimed. Harry arched his eyebrows. He knew they were taking her this seriously as a threat because of the Ness case and the runes in blood that had been found, not because of _his_ case, which almost no one knew about, but it still meant they were responding better than he had thought possible. Your average Auror thought he could overpower most criminals and didn't always guard them seriously enough.

"Miss Grayson?" he asked, moving forwards. "My name is Harry Potter. I'll be talking to you today, and if you answer honestly, then you'll be out of here in under an hour."

Grayson dropped her hands from her face and turned to look at him.

Harry recoiled. Her eyes were thick black holes, and out of them he saw something looking back that he recognized at once even though he had never seen it in the light.

The beast.

He might have stood there, paralyzed with fear, and let it take him, but one of the Aurors standing beside Grayson slammed into her from behind in response to the greasy smell of decay in the air. She turned on him with a snarl, and Harry saw the writhing tendrils reach for him, saw him _melt,_ saw the bright smear in the air that was his arm becoming nothing more than food for the force reaching out of Grayson--

He was moving as if in a dream, raising a Shield Charm in front of Ron, yelling for the other Aurors to clear out of the way, yelling to attract Grayson's attention. The scars on his back writhed and twisted, either because of his fear or because the beast in him sensed the presence of another like it, and Harry had to spare a second to worry about how in the world he could control _that_ if it decided to manifest--

And then a lightning flash passed him and slammed into Grayson. She let out a high, undignified, yelping wail, and crashed straight to the floor. The way her head bounced off it left no doubt that she was unconscious.

Harry turned, shaky with the adrenaline of battle, and saw the Auror who had saved him, saved them all, standing in the doorway of the interrogation room, just lowering his wand. 

Ian.

"Are you hurt?" he asked quietly, looking at Harry first before his gaze moved on. It was strong and professional of him to check that other people were all right, Harry thought. In his place, he probably would have stood there just staring at Ian or whoever else was most important to him in the room instead of glancing at the others in the way he was supposed to.

_If you had saved Draco..._

Harry bit the thought away and nodded. "Fine, but Auror Moulson will have to have his arm regrown," he said, after taking a moment to listen to the scars on his back. He no longer felt that grotesque movement beneath his robes, and he relaxed. "Are _you_ all right? That was strong magic you used to bring her down." He knew that his voice had more of a caressing tone than they had any right to, but from the small smile Ian gave him, it didn't matter.

"Fine," he echoed. "The magic I used was really just a variant on a lightning spell. It burns the consciousness out of Dark wizards who are too far gone in their insanity or their adrenaline to notice most pain."

"Brilliant," Harry breathed, and then turned away so that he was looking at Grayson instead of staring at Ian like an idiot any longer. He thought he would make Ian blush in a second, anyway. "So. Does anyone care to tell me how she got brought in when she was like this?" He heard his voice go dry, but he didn't care. Anyone who had arrested Grayson or spent any length of time with her this morning ought to have seen that _something_ wasn't right. 

And now a man was missing his arm, his eyes standing out with the wide, frantic circles around them that Harry was sure he had shown himself days after escaping the beast. Moulson's partner moved towards him and put one arm supportively around his shoulder, looking at Harry for instructions. Harry nodded, and she escorted him out of the room, his quiet moans of shock and fear trailing behind him.

One of the remaining Aurors coughed and stared at the floor. Harry focused on her. "Jacobs? You have something to say?"

"Something wasn't right," Auror Jacobs whispered. "I remember seeing that in her eyes when I came into the room. But something else...I don't know. I remember that, and then I remember forgetting it. I remember taking up my position as if everything was normal." She glanced up apologetically at Harry. "I think she locked away the part of my mind that was protesting."

Harry considered her, then nodded. She was being honest as far as she knew, and he didn't think that Grayson had poisoned her more than anyone else she'd been in contact with. Still... "Go to a Mind-Healer," he said, and she nodded at him and scurried out. Harry turned back to Ian. "Could you teach me that spell? I think we're going to need it if we encounter more people like this."

"If you'll tell me what she was doing, or what you know about it," Ian said in a low voice, with a shudder that seemed to ripple full-length down his body. "Whatever she was doing...fuck. I've never seen anything like it."

"I can't promise you the full story," Harry cautioned. "Some parts of it are still impossible to talk about. Other parts we don't know."

Ian nodded. "Whatever you can tell me will be fine."

Harry smiled at Ian, and glanced over his shoulder at Ron. Ron blinked at him. "I'm fine, mate," he whispered. "But I didn't know...you really do look at him as though you'd like to date him, don't you?" He sounded as though he didn't know whether to be intrigued or worried.

On that ambiguous note, Draco stepped into the room, a dark-haired pure-blood woman right behind him.

*

Draco stared at the room. A woman sprawled on the ground, Weasley and a second gaping Auror standing around useless as usual, a tall Auror glancing around at him with an expression of mild surprise...

And Harry. Harry without wounds, but looking at him with a complex expression on his face that suggested his appearance wasn't entirely welcome.

"How did you get in here?" the tall Auror asked. He had a quiet, commanding voice, but Draco didn't intend to listen to it. He zeroed in on Harry and walked away from Laura, who he knew would be content to stand there and watch everything in escalating amusement anyway.

"Didn't you feel the rings buzzing?" Draco demanded of Harry. "Didn't you know that you were in danger?"

Harry turned to glance at the sprawled woman, then turned to him. "Yes?" he asked, voice dry as dust. "Forgive me for having no time to send an owl when someone with tendrils coming out of her eyes was trying to kill me. Again."

Draco closed his eyes. Now that he thought about it, he could smell the heavy scent of decay in the air. He swallowed. He didn't want to think of Harry coming close to that, having to suffer through that and the memories it undoubtedly stirred up, all over again.

"But no, I didn't notice the rings buzzing," Harry said. "I tend not to, when I'm involved in battle situations." He glanced at the tall man standing beside Laura. "You can thank Auror Ian Shelborn for having saved me."

Draco whirled around. The tall Auror, Shelborn, lifted a cautious hand, as if he assumed that he would have to defend himself from Draco, and then gave an equally cautious smile. "Yes," he said. "I happened to know a spell that has functioned in the past to bring down criminals who seemed as deranged as this one did, and it worked this time."

_His boyfriend saved his life._

Draco thought his jealousy would eat a hole in his heart. _He_ was the one who saved Harry, protected Harry. _He_ was the one who had a platinum ring in his wedding band because he and Harry had saved each other. But that wasn't enough. This man--who talked like a prat, honestly, who said _has functioned in the past_ like that?--had to step in and take his place.

He might also have kissed Harry, but Draco didn't think that could have made his jealousy swarm up like this.

"Anyway," Harry said, as if determined to cut through and banish the tension in the room, "we have to make sure that Grayson is in proper custody before she wakes up, and have a Mind-Healer standing ready. He might be able to help her." He clapped his hands, and Weasley and the other Auror standing beside the chair started and moved forwards.

Shelborn didn't move, but stood eyeing Draco as if he wondered why he had him for an enemy. Draco glared back, and then turned to Laura, who had got them into the interrogation rooms in the first place by reminding a trainee Auror of a debt she owed.

Laura glanced at him and smiled. Her eyes were liquid with amusement.

"Oh, I _do_ like him," she murmured. "So fierce and green-eyed. I see why you want him." She glanced over his shoulder. "And why this Shelborn does."

Draco closed his eyes. The jealousy was dancing there, under the surface, shimmering liquid tar.

_I have to do something about this._


	33. Side by Side

Harry trusted that he was keeping himself from staring too obviously at the dark-haired woman beside Draco, because so far Draco hadn't scolded him for not knowing pure-blood ways and the woman hadn't set him on fire. Besides, everyone had plenty of other things to pay to, what with the statements that the Head Auror had demanded from the various witnesses to Grayson's manifestation and the secure conditions they were setting up to interrogate her again.

But it was hard not to stare.

The woman was exactly the sort of person Harry would have expected Draco to choose, other than perhaps the darkness of her hair instead of the blonde Harry had thought he preferred. She walked with a light spring in her step, and watched everything as if trying to figure out how it could matter to her. Or how she could use it, Harry reckoned. She sat at a table behind Draco, while the rest of them stood. Harry had heard her thanking the Auror trainees who brought the table and the chair and the cup of tea she was drinking in, but he had no idea how she had commandeered them in the first place.

Unbidden, Draco's sneering voice spoke in his head. _She's willing to use her power, and you're not._

Harry tried to turn his head, but his attention was dragged back soon enough as an older Auror, Anderson, questioned d'Alveda. She answered all the questions with a patient air that suggested she had better things to do without being offensive. Soon enough, Anderson backed off, and she went back to sipping her tea and watching the circus pivot around her.

Harry _really_ wished that he knew how she did that.

Soon enough, the statements had been given and taken, and Ian drifted towards Harry. Draco started doing so at the same time, so they both ended up in front of Harry within seconds of each other. Harry settled back on his heels and did his best to smile blandly at both of them.

Ian gave Draco a single curious glance, and then seemed to have decided to ignore him in favor of smiling at Harry. "I could teach you that lightning spell I mentioned, if you like," he offered.

"I want to talk to you about what happened." Draco's voice was lower, nowhere near as cheerful, and far more charged. "Please, Harry." He reached out, hesitated, then ran his fingers over the back of Harry's wrist. His eyes darted to the wedding ring on Harry's left hand, but he didn't touch it.

Harry shook his head to clear it. If someone had asked him a few minutes before, he would have said that he'd enjoy being the target of two people who both wanted his attention, as long as one of them was Draco. After all, _he_ was doing his best not to dart jealous little glances at the woman Draco was paying attention to and had arrived with.

But in reality, it made him tired and uneasy. He would have to make a choice that would slight someone, and he hated that.

_This is why I can't use my power the way d'Alveda uses hers, and it has nothing to do with being pure-blood or not._

A glance at d'Alveda revealed that she was watching with interest and fascination. She caught Harry's eye and winked at him. The expression on her face, as she toasted him with her cuppa, was sympathetic.

That shouldn't have given him strength, but it did. Harry turned and smiled at Ian. "In a little while," he said. "I think that I'll learn more as an unbiased observer if I watch how they handle Grayson before she wakes up and try to learn the aftereffects that way."

Ian hesitated. "All right," he said at last, and drifted off to the side, with a single suspicious glance for Draco that Draco didn't deign to return. 

Draco immediately leaned forwards and pitched his voice for Harry's ears alone. "Can I cast a privacy bubble so that no one else can hear us?"

Harry blinked, but nodded. He didn't think it would matter much as long as no one else in the room--except perhaps d'Alveda--noticed it, and right now, there was a long, serious discussion going on about how to interrogate someone who could literally change a person's mind. Even Ron had been drawn into it. 

The moment he gave his permission, Draco had his wand up and waving, and the privacy bubble settled around them with an almost tangible weight. Harry hunched his shoulders. The weight of the magic, as well as the sudden, quiet buzz in the ring on his finger, told him that Draco was probably upset about something. Putting himself in danger had to be at the head of the list.

"Listen," Draco said, staring hard at him. "I realized after I saw Shelborn that I don't want someone saving you ever again."

Harry blinked. "Thanks," he said. "I think. The blessings of an early death are pretty underestimated, then?"

Draco's stare turned into a scowl. "Not what I meant," he said. "I meant that I want to be the only one who saves you, the only one who guards you. I don't care if you date Shelborn, but I wanted to tear him apart with my bare hands for saving you."

Harry blinked again, but this time, it was to hold back something more uncomfortable than his shock. "Draco," he whispered, and reached out to put his hands on his shoulders.

"Date him if you have to," Draco said, moving a step forwards, although his muffled voice said that he still wasn't happy about the fact. "But don't--don't rely on him the way you do on me. Come with me. Be with me." He hesitated minutely, then said, with reluctance dragging his heels, "And I'll give up the courtship with Laura if I have to."

Harry closed his eyes and savored that for a long minute. He had been honestly unsure if Draco _wanted_ to sacrifice anything for him. But he had chosen, and he had shown that he could value Harry, rather than sticking by that heartless model of marriage that he had told Harry he followed at first. 

That was enough, that Draco _would_ give up those things for him if asked, so Harry didn't need to demand the actual sacrifice. He smiled up at Draco and shook his head. "No, court her if I'm dating Ian. But I don't think--Draco, I don't want him the same way I want you. He does things for me physically, but he doesn't know about the scars on my back, or the way that my magic reacts when I'm threatened by the beast. The scars nearly sent out tendrils again when Grayson attacked," he added, shuddering as he remembered the writhing sensation between his shoulder blades. "I don't know how I would have explained _that_ to Ian."

*

Draco straightened. The jealousy brewing in him liquefied again, but although it still burned, it hurt far less than it had an hour ago.

_I don't want him the same way I want you._

This was Draco's day to learn new things about himself, it seemed. That he could get jealous of Harry, and the physical intimacies that Harry would permit a lover to take. That being the only person Harry had ever looked at with desire didn't matter nearly as much as being the only person Harry had looked at with that _particular_ desire.

He knew marriage was more to Harry than the bed he shared. And Harry had as good as told him that when it came to passion and trust, he valued Draco more than this Shelborn.

As far as the bed, Draco could show Shelborn competition there, too. But it need not be direct or instant.

He reached out and cupped Harry's jaw. "Will you tell me what you've done with him so far?" he asked quietly, nuzzling along Harry's ear. Harry started and flushed, and Draco smiled. He would have to remember that Harry enjoyed stubble like that on bare skin. "I would like to hear."

"I've kissed him," Harry said. "And he tried to touch my back, but I warned him away." He shrugged and acted as though he was trying to think of something else, but Draco distracted him with his nose against Harry's ear again and long, slow touches to his shoulders. Harry watched him as he did it, but without the suspicion he'd used the last time Draco tried that. "Nothing else."

"Good," Draco said. "Would you mind if I kissed you now?"

Harry swallowed, and he looked as if he was trying to recover his bravery. Well, good. Draco had never thought of himself as brave, not in the sense that Harry was, but he could get used to being so. "If you don't mind other people looking at us and seeing it happen," he said.

Right, yes. The privacy bubble only blocked sound. Draco growled slightly as he bent down and let his breath ghost out into Harry's mouth. "I can kiss my legally married husband," he said. "And I'm going to."

He did, hard enough to make Harry sway on his feet. Harry stiffened his legs an instant later and pushed back, though. Draco laughed in delight as he felt Harry's tongue pushing against his lips, urging entrance, and he opened his mouth to tangle with it. Harry grunted as though someone had punched him in the stomach, although Draco was sure this particular sensation was more pleasant than that one.

" _Auror Potter._ "

The freezing words came from the older Auror who had interviewed Laura and seemed to be in charge of much of the activity in the room. Harry broke away from Draco's kiss, but kept his hands in place. "Sorry, Auror Anderson," he said. He tried to sound contrite, but that was sort of ruined, Draco thought contentedly, since his face was bright red and his voice was muffled by his swollen lips.

"You should be," the older Auror said, but he turned away after another glare, so Draco didn't get the chance to challenge him as he would have liked to. As Draco stepped back and let Harry go with a stroke across one shoulder blade, though, he did cross gazes with one person.

Shelborn, who was watching them with bafflement. Draco gave him a thin smile and an elaborate bow. Yes, Shelborn had probably picked up an exaggerated idea of how estranged they were, based on what Harry had told him.

Draco wouldn't move against him--for now. If Harry grew tired of him or he grew tired of Harry, then Draco would waste no time. He had Harry's blessing for his courtship right now, which meant he would look less gracious than Harry if he refused to allow Shelborn to stay around. And his mother had emphasized time and time again that pure-bloods, and especially Malfoys, should inevitably look the more gracious in any particular situation. It increased their enemies' hatred while taking away a pretext for attacking them. Draco liked that.

Harry smiled back at him, once, and then went to assist with Grayson's interrogation. Draco made his way back over to Laura and offered her his hand. "Are you ready to depart, my lady?" he asked.

"I think I've seen most of what I needed to." Laura rose to her feet, hand balanced on his arm, her eyes thoughtful. "Yes, I do like him, Draco. And I can see the reason that he might well glare at me."

Draco blinked. "He did?" He would have to have a word with Harry about that. It sounded like he was making himself jealous of Laura, whether or not he really should be.

"You never noticed because you were glaring too hard at Shelborn," Laura said, and the amusement sparked to life in her eyes like light dancing on waves. "I thought you were going to draw your wand and challenge him to a duel at one point. Which would have been interesting, if messy."

"You don't think I could take him?" Draco's eyes went back to Shelborn. The man stood as tall and straight as a soldier, elaborately ignoring Draco for the present. Or it might have been genuine ignoring, but Draco didn't think anyone could be in the room with him and not notice him _that_ thoroughly. He was watching as Harry spoke with the Head Auror. The Head Auror asked a question, and Harry shook his head vehemently and retorted. Shelborn smiled.

_As if he has a right to think that Harry is doing what he needs to do, or that he's insolent..._

Laura coughed. Draco looked down and realized that he had clamped his hand tight around hers. He smoothed her fingers out and gave her a brittle smile. "I think we should go."

"I agree," Laura said.

They turned towards the door, and Harry's head oriented on them at once. He wouldn't have looked that way if Shelborn had moved across the room, in front of him or behind him, Draco thought smugly. He inclined his head to Harry, and Harry smiled back.

Laura waved at him. Harry hesitated, as if unsure what the right response ought to be, and "compromised" by turning his back and addressing the Head Auror with more enthusiasm than ever. Draco frowned. _Among the pure-blood things he should learn are the polite forms of saying good-bye._

"I like him," Laura murmured again, as Draco escorted her towards the entrance to the Ministry they'd used in the first place, past the trainee who Laura had charmed into allowing them entrance. The trainee ducked her head and flushed. Laura didn't appear to notice, but Draco was sure she did. "And if you can smooth out the debts that you owe each other and how the way we compromise should go, then I should think we might do very well."

Draco gave her a large, fake smile, and decided that he would think about the taunting tone in her voice later. Harry had spoken to him with affection and trust, and that was the most important thing right now.

Besides, he was beginning to think that Laura was more complicated than he'd decided she was, and might take some more work to figure out.

*

"You're sure this will work?" Auror Anderson's voice was a low rasp, and Harry didn't have to look back at him to know that his hand was tight on his wand.

"Not entirely sure until we test it," Harry said, not deigning to look back. "But mostly certain, sir, yes."

"Not good enough," Anderson said, but Harry turned his head back this time and gave him an even look, and he shut up after that. It might have been because of Harry's name and scar--the visible one--or just because he'd remembered that Harry was the most in danger from a repeat performance, but Harry didn't care which.

He faced Grayson. Still unconscious, she was chained to a chair in the middle of a rune layered on the floor in blood, blood Harry had willingly donated from his own veins and then thinned with a number of spells, so that he could create it without bleeding to death. This rune was the one for binding. Harry highly doubted they needed the one for summoning, not when the beast was already present and in Grayson.

_In two people in this room._

A guard of Aurors stood at each major point of the circle, and the chairs and table that marked this as a seldom-used meeting room had been stacked along the walls. Harry had wanted them out of the room altogether--there was no telling what the monster in Grayson might be able to use as weapons--but Anderson had refused, saying that he didn't want anyone not already in the know to realize something unusual was going on here. Harry had ceded control as gracefully as he could.

Harry drew his wand. Ian had practiced the incantation that would bring down someone by burning out their consciousness with lightning several times, and Harry knew that he had more than enough power to manage it. He shouldn't be so nervous.

But that sensation of scars writhing on his back, the remembrance of the way the tendrils had flooded out of Grayson's eyes and eaten Moulson's arm...

_I wish Draco was here. He's the only one who really understands what I went through in the darkness._

Yeah, well, Draco wasn't here. And putting it off further was something Harry didn't think wise, not when Grayson was already jerking against her bonds in a way that suggested she was returning slowly to full wakefulness.

He tightened his hold on his wand and nodded to Ian, who stood at the point of circle directly behind Grayson's chair.

Ian smiled at him, a deep, calming expression, and chanted a short reviving spell under his breath. Grayson's eyes snapped open, and her gaze fixed on Harry. Harry didn't see tendrils reaching out of her eyes, but he did see darkness thrashing and shifting beneath the surface, rising towards it as he continued to watch.

Harry raised his wand high and said, in a barely breathed word that nonetheless had most of his magic behind it, " _Legilimens_."

His consciousness leaped out of his head and straight into Grayson's. She arched her back against the chair and shrieked, and Harry heard Anderson, who was always concerned with proper handling of prisoners, shouting something. He had no chance to pay attention. He'd dived beneath the liquid surface of Grayson's eyes and was swimming in the darkness with the beast.

But this time, it was not the one who had fed on him. It was a different manifestation, confused and hungry, and not as powerful. And he could move. He could snap out of her head and back into his own if he had to, and he could put Grayson to sleep, and he had power and control.

That made all the difference.

Harry circled and darted, forcing his way beneath the beast's presence to Grayson's immediate memories before the arrest. Going about her day, opening her shop, weighing out orders, going home at night...

And there it was. A blast of decay magic, vines coiling around Grayson's ankles, hanging blossoms over her head, thorns reaching for her eyes as she screamed. Harry took a deep breath and threw out his will, pinning the memory to the "ground" of her mind, as it were, so he could study it in more detail. They would have tried this with a Pensieve, but there was no way they could count on Grayson's cooperation to fetch out the right one. They might have pulled the beast free instead.

Two wizards stepped out from beneath a Disillusionment Charm and strode towards Grayson. Her memory was occupied with the terror of being held captive by those plants, but she had seen those two out of the corner of her eye, and so her memory, in some ways, retained them. Harry leaned back, squinting, and concentrated.

Yes, there they were. The man was heavyset with black eyes and blond hair that hung loose and scraggly around his face. The woman was delicate, fine-boned, with black eyes as well and red hair that looked dyed.

And Harry recognized her. One of the women who had been working on Auror Wilkinson's team when they approached the Ness runes. She had seemed as horrified as anyone else, standing back from the ring of blood, but there she was, cruel and focused, intent on Grayson. Even if she was only another beast-controlled victim, that was a better lead than any they'd had so far.

Harry leaped back in excitement and started to aim for the surface of Grayson's mind, clutching his new knowledge to himself.

The beast attacked.

It came down on him like a great bat, the wings beating in the sound that he remembered, the claws reaching out with a noise like great sails tearing. Harry rolled over to meet it, and cast a spell.

Not on the beast. From what he understood now, having felt it in close contact, it wouldn't actually be hurt by any magic that he could bring to bear. Not physically, at any rate. It was only a mental reflection at the moment, struggling to get out of Grayson's body, rather than coming from the outside, like the one that had fed on him.

Grayson had an inherent advantage, or rather the beast did, because this was her mind. But all Harry had to do was use the lightning spell, and he could shut down the very battleground the beast was counting on to give it its victory.

The darkness around him whistled and shrieked. Harry flung an arm across his eyes and ducked his head forwards. The lightning spell blazed out from his wand, his strength cloaking him like wings of his own, stopping the utter retreat that facing the beast might easily have turned into.

The world pivoted around him. Harry discovered that he was hanging on a chain in the middle of nothingness. The beast had stopped shrieking, as if it had been blinded by the radiance that came with the lightning spell. Or as if it had suddenly ceased to exist, although Harry knew they couldn't be _that_ lucky.

He rose out of Grayson's mind, and opened his eyes in his own body.

His back was quivering, taut, as if about to erupt wings at any moment--or tentacles from the scars. Harry grimaced, but shook his head. So far, it hadn't happened, and he didn't think that it was going to. He breathed, carefully, and saw Ron, the only one here who had any idea of what he might be facing, take a cautious step forwards. Harry smiled at him and nodded his head. Ron relaxed.

"I saw an identifiable face," Harry said hoarsely. Anderson took a concerned step nearer, and Harry nodded at him, convinced that the man wanted to be the first to hear this. That was fine with Harry. He had no investment in keeping the secret, not really. "Auror Niamh Porter. We need to bring her in for questioning as soon as possible. She was one of the pair who attacked Grayson. She might not be immediately guilty but another victim," he added, seeing resistance appear in a few of the faces in front of him. They would know and like Porter. "But we have to investigate, and find out which it is, and what she knows."

Grayson was once more unconscious. The Mind-Healer who'd been waiting in a corner of the room hastened forwards, dismissing the blood runes with a grimace and a shake of her head. Harry gladly left her to it, turning to Anderson. He was swaying on his feet, and Anderson surveyed him narrowly.

"Good work, Potter," he said abruptly. "But you shouldn't have risked yourself to find it."

Harry shrugged. They hadn't had any other choice. He wouldn't send someone else in unprepared for the beast's darkness. "I should put my memory of the other wizard into a Pensieve, sir. That might aid us in identifying him."

Anderson nodded at once, seeming glad to have something to do. He motioned Harry from the room, and Ron followed. They passed Ian on the way, who gave Harry a relieved smile.

Harry smiled back, and mouthed, _Thank you._ If Ian hadn't taught him that spell, he might not have survived the beast's assault in Grayson's mind.

But...

Even though, it struck him abruptly, Ian had taught him the spell, he was the one who had used it.

He had saved himself. Rescued himself.

He still had at least that much power and control.

His blood thrummed with excitement, and if Draco had been near him just then, Harry would have kissed him.


	34. Circling in Opposition

"She's already fled, hasn't she."

Harry knew his voice was flat, but he couldn't help it. The faces of the Aurors Anderson had sent told him the truth when they came back into the office. Anderson interrogated the searchers with a silent glance, then nodded and turned back to Harry, apparently deciding that he was trusted enough to hear this.

"Yes, Potter. Auror Porter is gone, and most of her personal effects were removed from the flat, looking as though this was the product of long planning rather than the desperate actions of a fugitive." Anderson gritted his teeth and chewed the end of his long, grey-streaked moustache, which Harry had thought from the first day he saw it existed only to give Anderson something to chew on. "And we received a resignation letter from her this morning, apparently. That fool of an undersecretary didn't think to _tell_ me about it until just now when I asked, of course."

"Let me go to her flat, sir," Harry said, surging to his feet. "There might be something left behind, something of the beast, that I could recognize--"

"No."

Harry blinked, unaccustomed to being so flatly refused permission. He glanced at Anderson, realized there was a gleam in the old man's eyes that he hadn't encountered since Auror training, and dipped his head. "May I ask why, sir?" He managed to keep his voice calm, even if it _was_ artificially calm instead of real.

"Because it's gone midnight," Anderson said. "And I have a letter on my desk informing me that I'm to be held responsible for violating several rules about the health and safety of my employees if I keep you here past eleven, and that Narcissa Malfoy will personally see that I rue that day." He leaned in until his nose almost touched Harry's. "I don't enjoy being lectured to, which is one reason I let you stay until we know Porter's fate, but it's been a long day, and even I can see that you're almost ready to collapse on your feet. Go. Home."

Harry blinked back at Anderson, and then, as if reminding him of them had brought them into existence, he felt the aches that spiraled through his body, the way his muscles were pulled taut almost to the point of snapping, the pain at his heels as though someone had bitten at them or driven the tendons tighter. Why did his bloody _heels_ hurt? Harry couldn't remember anything he'd done involving them.

But he had to admit, home sounded good right now. And bed, and protective spells around him to make sure that nothing of the beast could seep into his room or his dreams.

And his husband, and his mother-in-law.

He mumbled something incoherent and escaped past Anderson and the sympathetic but still staring people who had investigated Porter's flat. At least he didn't think they would hold anything he might have said against him later.

He had to go back to the office for his cloak, and Ron took one look at him and refused to let him Apparate. He actually marched Harry down to the Atrium and stood there while he used the Floo to make sure that he pronounced the name right and didn't end up "in Knockturn Alley, like second year, remember, mate?" When Harry tried out some blurry accusation as to why _Ron_ was here and not at home where he should be, where Hermione would want him to be, Ron only lifted his eyebrows smugly and tilted his head to the side.

"She understands that I need to stay late sometimes because I don't push it _all_ the time," he said. "But when you're always chasing enemies at the expense of your health and energy, then, well, shit happens."

Harry used a glare. Ron still didn't seem to feel as sorry as he should have. He pushed Harry into the Floo, and Harry was whirled away and back to the Manor wondering how he was going to get up the stairs to his room. Maybe he could have a house-elf carry him.

*

"Master Harry Malfoy is being back, Master Draco Malfoy First Master sir!"

Draco closed his eyes and didn't put his head down on his knees, because he didn't think that would have been appropriate in front of a house-elf, even Juli, who was devoted to Harry. But it was long moments before he could find his voice and answer her excited bouncing. "You may go to him."

Juli vanished. Draco shook his head with a little smile. He had ordered her to come and tell him when Harry was home, rather than simply attend to Harry and take him to bed. It had been hard on the elf, but Draco had wanted that alarm system so Harry wouldn't feel too watched-over. If he wanted to think he still had complete privacy in the Manor as to his comings and goings, Draco intended to let him.

But as intense as Harry's need for privacy was, Draco thought his need to know Harry was safe at least as great.

He listened, though in reality he couldn't hear the faint sounds of Juli helping Harry to bed, offering him food, building up the fire for him. Knowing Harry, he would refuse the food. Draco glanced at the clock and shook his head. _And he probably hasn't eaten since this morning, either._

But there were some things that he couldn't force Harry to do, and eating was one of them. He sat still and quiet until Juli appeared in front of him and bowed again. He had wanted her to let him know when Harry fell asleep.

Then he turned and crossed the room--the same one where he had once gone to sit with Harry and discuss their respective views of marriage--to the sunken pool in the center of the floor. He knelt down close to the edge and stared, pouring his will into it without benefit of a wand. He had never done this before, and wasn't sure it would work. His father had described the process to him years ago, at the time when they had _all_ been certain that Lucius's domination over the Malfoy family would last forever and Draco would inherit only in a comfortable old age.

The water roiled. Draco grimaced and braced his hands so that he wouldn't fall into it. His father had never told him how _tiring_ this was. Draco's eyelids were drooping and he'd barely done anything of note. He pushed himself further back from the edge of the water, until his arse hit the couch that surrounded most of the pool, and then settled down and stared into the pool again.

The image gradually formed. A blazing fire at the foot of the bed filled the room with difficult and shifting shadows, and Draco could see the blurred reds and greens and blues and bits of gold and silver inlay, and then he could make out the clustered scarlet row of Harry's Auror robes. 

On the bed, Harry lay without a shirt, on his stomach, his arms stretched above him as if they were chained to something, asleep.

Draco shivered violently. The emotion that touched him when he saw the scars from above for the first time was...strange. He had known what they looked like, of course, but somehow it was still hard to see them like this, the maze of grey and twisting worm-trails, the channels that were gouged into Harry's flesh. They made no pattern that Draco could see, though he squinted at them for as long as he could stand to look, and tried to make his mind find one.

Harry's breathing was light and steady, and his forehead didn't furrow with the stress that Draco had seen on his face the few nights he was asleep in Draco's bed. That was good.

He could look away anytime now. Harry wouldn't be amused if he knew about the existence of the pool and that the head of the Malfoy family could use it to look at any room within the Manor. Draco had had to reassure himself Harry was safe, but now he knew that, and there was really no reason for him to keep on watching.

Especially when the scars made the skin on his neck and balls crawl.

But he did, and only pulled his will out of the pool and shut away the vision when Harry began stirring as though he felt eyes on him. Harry's magic was powerful enough that Draco thought he might be able to sense the intrusion when he woke. Most likely not, but why take the chance at all?

His will still sparked above the pool in a cascade of golden sparks and silver ones. Draco hesitated, then decided he might as well use it and dropped the magic into the water once more. What was Lucius doing, locked away in the small wing of the Manor that had been all he had to live on now?

A familiar scene formed--well, familiar except for the rooms, because Lucius was no longer seated in the large formal study that had belonged to the master of the house--with his father bent over a desk, his eyes fixed on a book. As Draco watched, he murmured to himself and turned the page. Draco pushed a bit more of his magic into the pool, but he was swaying already and knew that he wouldn't be able to muster enough power to hear what Lucius had said.

He just watched instead, watched his former father read the book until the end, then lean back and stare thoughtfully into the fire. He looked less weary, less cowed, than Draco had hoped would be the case. His hands linked together behind his head, and he smiled, now and then, as if fleeting thoughts amused him. Then he stood up and reached out to pinch the reading candle on his desk out.

Draco withdrew from the vision at the same time, wishing that he had been able to catch a glimpse of the book's title. But no, it had remained flat on Lucius's desk until the end, and the spine was turned away from Draco.

He should, perhaps, endeavor to keep more of an eye on his former father, he thought soberly, and stop being so enthralled with Harry.

*

Harry yawned his way through getting ready the next morning. He was eager to go in and see if he could find a lead that the Aurors investigating Porter's flat had missed, but at the same time, he dragged his feet as far as getting out of bed went. It was so comfortable, so _warm._ He wouldn't have minded lying there for a little while longer.

He paused, then shook his head and smiled wryly to himself. He _would_ get too used to the Malfoys' luxuries and the way they wanted to spoil him if he let himself. This was the kind of time when he did want a narrower and harder bed, and when the mere thought that he could have food if he called for a house-elf was worrisome. He wouldn't have such luxuries out in the field.

Especially if the attempt to find Porter, and the wizards who would come out of hiding as Harry and the other Aurors got closer to their secrets, would be as dangerous as he thought they would be.

"Mr. Potter."

The name that greeted him when he stepped out of his room didn't seem to fit him, although of course most of the Aurors at the Ministry still called him by his old surname. But it had one useful effect. It meant Harry was expecting trouble even before he turned around, because he knew who it was.

"Lucius," he said. He didn't know if Draco would want him to call someone exiled from the family "Mr. Malfoy."

Lucius grimaced as if he'd bitten into a sour apple, but nodded. "I suppose I deserve that, from you," he said, and ran his gaze efficiently across Harry's face and body, as if he were cataloging changes from the ones that had been there last time he saw Harry. Harry gritted his teeth and put up with it. It was less bothersome than some of the other things Lucius might have done.

"I owe you an apology," Lucius said, which was so far from what Harry had expected him to say that he spent endless minutes blinking at him.

"Excuse me?" he asked at last.

Lucius inclined his head. "I brought you into the family dragging you on ropes of steel."

"It's chains," Harry said, his brain still in the mood to seize possibly irrelevant details and make them important. "It would be chains of steel that you dragged me on, not ropes."

Lucius tensed as though anticipating a blow, then hissed and made a sideways, sweeping gesture with one hand. "Well. Yes. The problem is that I had thought you would adapt to it rather better than this."

Harry snorted. "How could you think that? You knew my temper and my reputation, and you knew the history that lay between us. I don't believe you."

Lucius watched him with glittering coldness, which Harry was glad to see. _Never forget who he is, what he did, no matter how apologetic he looks now. He'll always want something that you don't want to give, and negotiating fairly is a weakness, to him._

"I _meant_ ," Lucius said at last, "that I had thought you would keep your distance from my son and wait for me to change my mind. Not plunge headlong into a love affair with him that you must know is hopeless."

Harry studied him for a moment before he replied. Lucius had a small cluster of sweat beads near the hair on his temple, and one hand was closed into a loose fist. He opened it again when he saw that Harry was watching, but the damage had already been done.

"You're lying," Harry said softly. "That's the real reason that you're approaching the end of the marriage bond like this. And you _are,_ aren't you? You're hinting that you'll release us. But the sole reason is that we haven't done what you expected. We haven't become enemies, and Draco hasn't been made miserable and I haven't dragged against him like you expected. We've adapted, and Draco's even courting a woman I think would make him more independent of you if _they_ married." He shook his head, exasperated. "Is admitting that you lost and releasing the bond because it doesn't benefit anyone so foreign to you? If you let the bond go, then things would at least change, but you have to approach even _that_ as if it represents an attempt to manipulate us."

"You do not understand," Lucius said, but his color had heightened, if only subtly, and thus showed Harry that he'd guessed right. "I want my son happy and free, and I understand now that he would not find either happiness or freedom with you."

"Then end the bond," Harry said. There was heat in his throat and his cheeks, and he could feel his heart thrumming like a swarm of bees. Lucius stared at him, and Harry wondered what he looked like just then. Maybe somebody who would attack, if the cautious step backwards Lucius took a moment later was any indication. "Snap it now, and then Draco won't be in danger from me."

"I did not say that he would be _in danger_ ," Lucius said, with such prissiness that Harry almost wanted to laugh despite the threat to his marriage.

_And why should I care if the marriage is threatened? Two days ago, I was thinking that the ritual to end it would be the best thing we could do._

"That sounds like another reason not to do it right now," Harry said. "But you could do it now, right? All you need is a little effort of will, and it's done." He heard a footstep behind him, towards the top of the stairs, but couldn't turn around to see whether it was Draco or Narcissa. He was fairly sure that Lucius would take any motion away from him as an admission of weakness. 

"You want to leave him behind?" Lucius asked in a low voice. "That is not the impression I received from the last day and night."

"I want you to stop playing like this," Harry told him bluntly. "I want you to stop acting as if you have any power over us. As long as you dangle the bait in front of us, you think we'll leap and snap at it like hungry dogs. But I'm not going to. _Go away,_ Lucius." He paused, and gave Lucius a nasty smile. "I would call you father-in-law, but considering that you're exiled from the family, I can't."

He turned around and faced Draco. Draco stood as still as one of those statues in the mausoleum, his eyes darting back and forth between Harry and Lucius.

"I do still want to be with you," Harry told him softly. "But I won't let Lucius control us like this." And he walked past Draco towards the stairs that led down to the main dining room. "Coming?" he added over his shoulder.

He felt the hesitation surging behind him like an ocean wave, and he didn't know if Draco would follow. He really might prefer to stay and confront his father, if only because he thought Lucius the more important one in this equation. 

Harry refused to let himself turn his head. He kept steadily walking, and if Draco chose opposition over cooperation, well, that was his look-out.

But then there came a steady cascade of footfalls after him, and Draco was beside Harry, offering his arm as if he was escorting Harry out of a fancy dinner. Harry hesitated, then took it. He might have worried about it making them look weak in front of Lucius, but Lucius not only thought of them as weak already, he thought he could do anything he liked with them. _That_ was pretty fucking obvious. 

"How did you do that?" Draco breathed at Harry as they reached the lower step.

Harry looked up at him, shrugged, and smiled. "I didn't grow up with him looming over my life and teaching me everything I thought I knew, so it makes me harder for him to intimidate," he said simply. "Should we go in and ask what's for breakfast?"

*

Draco had not realized how Harry's fearlessness might translate into a confrontation with Lucius. When he came up to invite Harry to breakfast, he had seen Harry braced in front of his former father, and the first thought that came to mind was, _He'll betray me. He wants free of the bond so badly that he'll make a bargain with my father, and leave me behind._

That was a stupid thought, Draco thought now, swallowing a slice of delicately prepared ham with difficulty. Harry would have come at once if Lucius had snapped the marriage bond and told Draco about it, and Draco would have had reason to suspect something when the ring broke in half and fell from his finger, anyway.

That wasn't a betrayal. That was Lucius deciding to do something, and Harry responding in the best way he could.

 _I still can't really tell if he wants the marriage or not,_ Draco thought, licking his lips as he watched Harry talking to his mother. Narcissa had a quiet shine of happiness about her face, and looked at them sitting together with complacency that sent a surge of flame curling around Draco's heart. _But I think what he wants is to choose. If Lucius threatens him with dissolution of the bond, he won't let Lucius use it as a threat. If someone else urges him to keep to the marriage, he'll resist if they seem to have selfish motives for it or to be twisting his arm._

Harry was more adaptable than Draco had ever dreamed.

And he did not know how he was going to let him go.

He stared at Harry, who raised one eyebrow back at him and looked as if he'd like to ask a question. But just then, a large white owl came through one of the windows of the dining room, flying heavily. Draco stood up and reached out an arm for it, but it swerved and flew for Harry. Harry gazed up with a wistful expression on his face, and Draco remembered that he'd had a white owl that had died in the war.

"Harry," he said sharply. "Don't. That's Pansy's bird, and I don't know what she'll do to you if she touches you."

Harry hastily cast a small ward in front of him. The owl pulled up, hovering with creaky flaps, and dropped the package it held in its talons. The package hit the table and broke apart.

Out of it swarmed a whirl of photographs, accompanied by a sheet of pink paper saying in Pansy's voice, "Forgive me, darlings. I had to wait longer than I expected to find the perfect gift."

Draco stared at one of the photographs as it hovered in front of him. It showed Harry locked in a passionate kiss with a woman who certainly wasn't Ginny Weasley, from her height and dark hair, though she had her back to the camera and Draco couldn't see her face. Harry pulled away from the kiss a moment later and gave the camera a leer Draco had never seen him wear.

The other pictures were similar. Harry kissing men, kissing women, embracing a dog, staring at a centaur as if trying to estimate how well-hung he was. All of them would pass muster to a casual glance, which was all most people would give them. 

Draco knew they must have been tempered with magically, but he didn't know the exact spells. He turned around to see how Harry was taking it.

Harry's face was so calm that Draco tensed. The ring on his finger wasn't buzzing, but he thought it might start soon. Harry plucked a picture out of the air that showed him kneeling in front of a horse with his mouth open and studied it. He raised his eyebrows a moment later.

"I recognize the horse," he said. "We worked a case where the suspect was using Dark magic to kidnap people's pets, warp their minds and instincts, and send them back to their owners to attack them. This is based on a picture of me that ran in the _Prophet,_ standing with the horse we rescued in time. Twisted, of course." He flicked the picture once, hard, with his nail and glanced at Draco, as if to see how he would take that.

"I know these aren't real," Draco said quietly.

"Did you?" Harry's voice was very distant. "You looked as if you doubted, for a second."

"You can't read all the truth that matters from my eyes," Draco said, with immense dignity, and then turned back as the pink envelope spoke in Pansy's voice again.

"These pictures have been sent to the _Prophet,_ as well," she cooed. "As I said, it took me a long time to think of a suitable gift. I hope that you'll forgive me, and understand the reason for the delay. Happy marriage, Draco dear. If you overcome this challenge and still want each other, I'll be _very_ impressed. That naughty Potter, lying to you about his sexual experience." Her voice paused, then chuckled. "And other things he might have."

The envelope burst into sparks, eliminating the chance that Draco could track it back and find out exactly where Pansy was now. The photographs scattered down to lie on the table. 

His mother picked up the nearest one, the dog one, and looked at it. Harry immediately flushed and scrambled for it. "Mrs. Malfoy," he said in a strained voice. "Please. Don't."

Narcissa sat back and looked up at Draco. He recognized the set of the lines around her mouth and eyes, and began to smile back.

"Don't worry, Harry," his mother said, in the kind of voice that Draco knew had made armies stop still in their tracks. "We are going to handle this. You are a member of our family, and no one insults the Malfoys like this."

Harry looked apprehensively back and forth between them. "You can't kill her," he said a moment later.

"Of course not," Narcissa agreed.

"Killing wouldn't make her suffer enough," Draco explained, and looped an arm around Harry's shoulders. "Come, I'll escort you to work. That should prove to anyone who wants to see it that I still support you."

He caught his mother's eye again on the way out of the dining room. Her faint smile had faded.

 _Pansy, darling,_ Draco thought, his mind a calm, gentle eye in the middle of a churning storm. _That was a mistake._


	35. United in the War

As they came into the Ministry, Harry realized that his body was braced as tended to happen to him when he was going into a raid, or other battle. He shook his head, more than mildly annoyed with himself, and tried to lengthen and loosen his stride at the same time. If he looked that tense, then someone would think he was more vulnerable than he really was.

Or than he wanted to project, at least.

Beside him, Draco stalked along like the dragon he was named for, returning the glances that people gave them with more than necessary force. Harry reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, smoothing slowly up and down. Draco started and stared at him, narrowing his eyes as though Harry had done something wrong instead of just unexpected.

"Harry, don't you _care_?"

"Yes," Harry said. "But you're looking as though you think the whole world hates us, and that'll show our enemies that we're bothered. We just have to bear up through it, not fight it. We don't have enough strength to fight everyone," he added, thinking of the furious way he had ripped up the papers delivered to him with articles that speculated, right after the war, that he must have been really allied with Voldemort, to have killed him so easily. Except the articles never called him Voldemort, of course.

"What do you mean?" Draco's voice was low, wary. Yes, Harry was definitely not acting in the proper Malfoy-Approved Way.

_Since when have I ever?_

Harry glanced around. The people that looked at them now smiled or smirked more often, and that was something he didn't think Draco would tolerate. He sighed and drew Draco into a small supply cupboard that was usually used for storing parchment and ink. It was empty right now, and Harry hoped it would remain that way. The last thing they needed was someone coming along to accuse Harry of snogging Draco on Ministry property. They would spin it as him being so insatiable that he couldn't wait until they were properly home and in bed.

After those long years of watching them at work, Harry understood how the reporters and budding reporters thought.

"You--well, remember that we only have Pansy to hate," Harry said. 

"And the writers at the _Daily Prophet_ ," Draco said, and bared his teeth as though he was looking forward to ripping out throats.

Harry barely held back the flinch. He didn't think Draco would attack _him_ , but he might get out of control and do something that would hurt him badly, either financially or physically or legally.

And Harry didn't want Draco hurt.

"Not random people in the corridors," Harry continued firmly. "Even if they did enjoy the articles. Even if they sneer at you and me, or make jokes. They're not the ones who caused this. We would only get in trouble if we tried to start something with them and my superiors saw it, anyway."

Draco stared at him searchingly. Then he said, "Do you really want never to hurt anyone, even your enemies? How do you survive as an Auror when you have to arrest people, or tell victims bad news?"

Harry frowned at him. "It's not like that."

"Then what's it like?" Draco leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Because, to me, it comes across as though you think I shouldn't strike out at anyone, but they're free to strike at me. And you."

Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "It's like--pure-blood principles," he said, deciding to appeal to something that might convince Draco. "Do you strike out at everyone who insults you? Or business. Do you get upset every time someone takes over a business you wanted? Or do you smile at them and make promises to yourself to get back at them later?"

"That's less personal than this is," Draco protested. "Pansy wanted to hurt me--and you."

"Why?" Harry asked, thinking that he might get some insight into Parkinson if Draco talked about her. He hadn't met any of Draco's other friends so far, and he didn't know if they were the sort to appreciate Parkinson's prank, or despise it, or make sympathetic noises aloud while sneering behind their hands. "Did she have some hopes of marrying you herself?"

"I hope not," Draco said. "She knows I would demand standards of my wife that she would find it hard to meet."

"You sound like you're breathing pure hauteur when you say that," Harry informed him, and Draco blinked, satisfyingly. Harry shook his head. "So she did this for a lark, and you'll need to keep a tight leash on your anger when we're talking to other people."

"Why?" Draco asked. "If they taunt us?"

Harry nodded. He had thought it would be hard to make Draco understand, and here was the evidence. "Yes, that's the difficult part. But I've been dealing with the press for years, Draco, and they only bite harder when they have the taste of blood. It's for the best if you can smile at them, and smile harder when they try to accuse you of something or bait you into attacking. If you can quip back at them, then you'll get a laugh and be the darling of the other papers for a time." He hadn't managed that very often. He could make Ron laugh, and Hermione, but that was different from using the kind of wit that made people flock to him. In a lot of ways, his life would have been easier if he'd had it.

_Draco might. Assuming his sense of humor has improved since his Hogwarts years._

"But that doesn't make sense," Draco said, one eyebrow rising. "You did nothing wrong. Why shouldn't we try to turn the blame and the rumors back on Pansy, where they both belong?"

Harry made a frustrated grasping motion with one hand at the air, knowing he probably looked ridiculous. But Draco was less experienced at this game than Harry had realized, if he was suggesting things like _that._ "It's--Draco, they won't take it that way. We can't say something that will absolutely convince them I didn't have sex with all those people and animals and beings, because it's too good a story. Surely you've worked with the papers before, after the trials and with some of your Muggle business deals?" he added, a bit desperately.

"I gave them what they wanted to hear," Draco said. "Which was always something that wasn't the truth. And I smiled for them, and winked at them, and now and then pretended that they were getting something from me that no one else was getting. It's always worked well enough."

Harry nodded, relieved that they would have the means to come to a common understanding after all. "Exactly. But it's not that simple this time. Pansy was the one who gave them _everything,_ everything they would have wanted to hear. We can only ride the tide that results, not control it."

"That's the root of your conflict, then," Draco breathed. "You care enough about your public reputation, and mine, to want to control it, but you won't use the methods that would ensure that."

Harry eyed the grin that was appearing on his face. "Should I be worried?" he asked, trying to make it into a joke. It fell a little flat, especially when Draco leaned near and kissed him through the grin, slowly, smoothly, as though that would make his knees melt and reassure him. The infuriating thing was how close it came to working.

"Leave it to me," Draco said softly into his mouth. "You should have hired someone who could manage your public image for you a long time ago, because that would leave you free to attend to those things that are _truly_ important. But this is what we have, and I would rather do that for you than recommend someone to you."

"Thanks," Harry said, still a little dazed from the kiss and trying to work out whether Draco was insulting or complimenting him, or just stating the truth as he saw it. "I think."

Draco laughed just as softly as he'd kissed Harry and stepped back with his arm tucked around Harry's shoulders. "Come with me. I'll show you what we mean."

 _A fortnight ago,_ Harry reflected as he stepped out of the small cupboard with Draco firmly at his side, _hearing those words would have terrified me. And maybe I should still be terrified now._

But it felt too good at the moment to have someone to lean on, no matter how much he might scold himself later for such weakness. So he leaned his head on Draco's shoulder and suffered himself to be carried.

*

"Mate, did you hear about...oh..."

Draco did have to smile at the way Weasley's voice trailed off when he and Harry walked into the office together. Weasley dropped back to his desk and gaped at Draco, as though his best-friend outrage couldn't outcompete his best-friend shock at seeing Harry together with his husband. Draco eased Harry gently into his seat and then turned and faced Weasley, making sure his face was sufficiently serious.

"We know about what Parkinson did, because she was kind enough to send all the pictures straight to us," he said. "But we didn't have a chance to read the papers this morning, and we don't know exactly what they've chosen to report. How bad is it?"

Weasley subjected him to another stare, this time of the kind that Draco would have expected to accompany a clenched wand. But then he seemed to decide that the way Harry leaned forwards and smiled at him was enough of a signal that he could trust Draco, and he nodded and snatched up a paper that had been laid face-down on his desk as though that would get rid of the filth on it.

"This," he said, handing it over.

Draco scanned it. The headline was less hideous than he'd expected; there were certain things the _Prophet_ couldn't say as long as they wanted to continue to be the newspaper of choice for prim witch matrons, so they had settled on _HARRY POTTER: HERO OR MENACE?_ Most of the pictures of Harry kissing men or women had been published, and one where he clearly had his hand beneath a witch's robe, though not so clearly that the _Prophet_ couldn't deny it if someone complained. Draco didn't see any of the animal ones or the one where Harry was staring at a centaur's cock or in a passionate embrace with a mermaid. He presumed that they would be published in the _Prophet's_ more tawdry relatives, of course. He nodded and handed the paper back.

"What's the reaction been so far?"

"Subdued." Ron shook his head. "No one's quite sure how to react. There have been rumors for years, but if there are pictures, no one knows why they haven't surfaced before now, from someone trying to blackmail Harry at the very least. There are a few Aurors crowing about it, of course, but they're being shunned. Most of us consider them unfortunately obsessed with Harry, anyway."

Draco nodded thoughtfully. That made sense to him as a beginning response. Unfortunately, that said nothing to what the response would be outside the Auror Department, where most of the people knew Harry well and had worked with him.

"Harry? Are you all right? I came as soon as I heard."

Draco had shifted to place his body between Harry and the door as soon as he heard the words and before he heard who was speaking; it sounded so much like the sort of obnoxious treacley thing that some of the people who pretended they were friends would say. But he had to change his mind when he saw Shelborn standing in the door, staring at Harry.

 _Great. Wonderful. I forgot about him. That's going to make this all more complicated, that Harry is married and dating at the same time._ His own courtship with Laura would play into the picture, as well, but then again, it had been quieter than Harry's approach to Shelborn, and Pansy hadn't spread pictures that implicated _Draco_ in all sorts of sexual scandals.

But Shelborn was pure-blood, which Draco knew was one of the reasons that Harry had chosen him, because a pure-blood was likely to understand the great, twisting mess that was his and Harry's marriage and the complications that resulted from it. Perhaps Draco could recruit him as an ally. At the very least, it was worth a try. He took a deep breath and deliberately relaxed his stance, tried to make himself seem a little more welcoming, a little less threatening. Shelborn peered at him as if he didn't know what to make of that.

Well, if he didn't know, then Draco would tell him. "You saw the article the paper published about Harry?"

Shelborn snorted. "Yes. And as tempting as it was to think that you were behind it at first, I know that you would never have damaged your own social standing like that."

Draco fought hard against the temptation to snap. Harry was more important than the stupid feud he wanted to have with Shelborn, and he had to remember that. "All right," he said. "Thank you for your flattering confidence in me." Shelborn grinned despite himself at that. "But can you help convince other people that Harry didn't do what they implied?"

"Of course." Shelborn's smile vanished, replaced by a scowl so dark that Draco momentarily felt sorry for the criminals he captured--but only momentarily. "Anyone could see those photographs were made with clumsy, crude magic, patterned off other pictures but with the alterations obvious to anyone who looks."

Draco felt his senses go into high alert, and smiled broadly enough that Shelborn eyed him with what seemed to be distrust. "You can tell that?" he asked. "I didn't know that was a common talent among Aurors." It might account for some of the subdued reaction Weasley had described.

Shelborn shook his head. "I don't think it is. But my family works constantly with magical artifacts to improve them, and it's obvious to _us_ when the enchantment on something has been altered. On some of those pictures, you can even see a moment when the moving figures revert back to their positions in the _original_ photograph, like Harry manacling someone. It's just a flash, but it's there."

Draco nodded, thinking rapidly. "And you would be willing to say that in public? And point out instances of evidence like that the photographs have been tampered with?"

"Of course!" Shelborn looked as though Draco had asked him whether he shat in toilets or on the ground. "There's little I wouldn't do for Harry." He looked past Draco with a tenderness that, Draco hastily reassured himself, didn't come from being in love; it just meant that Shelborn had more kindness in him than Draco had realized, and that Harry had chosen better than he'd _ever_ realized. 

Draco couldn't resist turning back to see how Harry took that. He found his husband on his feet, staring at Shelborn. His finger was rubbing the wedding ring on his left hand.

He didn't seem aware that he was doing it. But seeing it still calmed some of the fears and jealousies that had risen in Draco like a glittering wave.

Then Harry smiled, and Draco decided that he would have to keep a tighter hold on his emotions, after all. And remember that Shelborn had a useful skill, and that he'd offered to help. That was more important than being the only man who had ever touched or kissed Harry.

Although, it sometimes seemed to Draco when he thought about it, not _that_ much more important.

"Thank you, Ian," Harry said quietly. He hesitated, then added, "Are you sure the firestorm that's about to come down doesn't make you want to withdraw? You know they'll say that you're only my latest victim, that I've seduced you and turned you into someone else who's dependent on me for sex."

"They'll say that," Shelborn agreed, and his hand drifted to his wand. "For about two seconds."

Draco nodded agreement. Shelborn would do.

The expression on Harry's face was complex. _He really hates people fighting for him, or over him,_ Draco decided, in a sudden flash of insight. _He can just about accept this because Shelborn will be defending himself, and I'll be doing the same with the reputation of our family. But it still bothers him. He still sees it, in some ways, as a cheat._

_If only I could convince him otherwise..._

But he would have his chance later. For now, they had to plan their strategy. Draco sat down on the edge of Harry's desk and motioned for Shelborn to close the door. "What should we do first?"

*

He seemed to have a habit of making friends--and lovers--who were good strategists, Harry realized slowly as he listened. Ron hammered in suggestions, while Ian contributed details about the technical means of recognizing altered magical pictures and Draco organized everything and decided which order the steps of their plan should go on. They were already producing something so smooth and organized that it dazed Harry a bit when he thought about it.

And dismayed him. He had to admit that part.

Although, really, it was hard to understand why it would. His friends and his husband were stepping in to save him. Harry had done the same thing more times than he could count, whether it was helping Mrs. Weasley with her grief or talking to George about Fred or saving Ron's life when they went up against a threat together as Aurors. He never thought twice about it. It was just the sort of thing friends _did,_ at least when they were as close to someone as he was to the Weasleys.

So it was kind of irrational to be upset or bewildered that other people were willing to do the same thing for him, and he would do his best not to think about it anymore. He shook his head and paid closer attention.

"I don't think we'll need to worry about that," Draco was saying, in response to a question from Ron about whether they would need to watch out for another action on Pansy's part. "She's...unlikely to have any time in the near future. Or to be hiding from questions from reporters herself." His smirk was small, and someone not trained to reading faces--or suspecting Slytherins--might have missed it, but Harry knew Ron wouldn't.

"What are you going to do?" Ron asked suspiciously. "You have to understand, I hate what happened to Harry, but I can't know about anything illegal, or it'll cost me my job."

"I know that," Draco said, though he looked down his nose as he said it. Harry rolled his eyes at Draco's back. _Haughty, superior git._ Ron was scowling, but at least he held his tongue as Draco continued. "What I meant is that my mother will do something to keep Parkinson's mind occupied. We've already discussed with Harry that we don't intend to kill her." He gave Harry a tolerant glance. "This will be something physical, but it will only hurt her as much as an itch. In fact, exactly as much as that." His smirk was widening.

Ian seemed to understand on a level Harry didn't, because he choked. Harry shook his head. Maybe it was a pure-blood thing.

"You brewed it that fast?" Ian asked. He was standing close to Harry, now and then reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. Harry was trying not to think about how much it comforted him, or about all the subtle differences he had noted between it and Draco's touch.

"Yes, of course," Draco said, his eyes bright and lazy as he leaned back on the desk and looked at Ian. If he was bothered by the way Ian touched Harry, he honestly didn't show it. He had a faint, smug smile on his face, as though he and not Narcissa was responsible for this. Harry tried to catch his eye, but he blandly looked away. "We have such potions on hand for when we need them."

"Is that often?" Harry had to ask. "You sounded when you told me about what she'd done that someone offending a member of your family didn't happen very often."

"Oh, of course not," Draco said. "People stopped because they learned how much offending a Malfoy would cost them in blood and pain. But I think too much time has gone past, and we need to remind people of that lesson. Or else, Pansy thinks being a friend of the family is going to protect her. Which it won't." His gaze remained mild, but this time, he reached behind him and picked up a piece of paper, which he crushed in his fist.

Harry shook his head. "You said that you weren't going to kill her."

"And I meant that," Draco said. "There can still be blood and pain. It's just blood and pain that people inflict on themselves, and which leaves them alive."

"I can't hear this," Ron said pointedly, putting his hands over his ears. "The marriage bond might mean that _Harry_ can, but if you used some type of illegal potion, Malfoy--"

"No one ever bothered to ban it," Draco said. "It's uncommon. And it's not--entirely illegal, or bothersome in effect. Just very, very inconvenient to someone who's offended." His eyes were shining in a way that made Harry think he was going to burst out singing.

Ron shook his head. "Then it could still be something morally repugnant," he said. "Can we get back to talking about the strategy we'll use against the papers? I find that a _lot_ easier to understand and support."

"Just for you, Weasley," Draco said coolly, and they went back to it. Ian stepped away from Harry, caught up in the discussion, and Harry was able to fold his arms behind his head and give everything up to them.

If he wanted to.

Well, he was trying to learn to be more comfortable when other people took care of him. That could potentially happen right here.

Draco, still nodding in response to something Ian had said about the photographs, stood up and sauntered behind Harry. He trailed a hand along his shoulder, in the same place Ian had touched before.

It was casually done, in such a way that Harry didn't think Ian had even noticed, but it wasn't casually _meant_ , or Draco would have done it later, Harry was sure, and on the other shoulder. Although even then, he might have suspected Draco of doing it on purpose.

He turned his head and lowered his chin, pinning Draco's hand for a moment.

Draco froze, blinking at him. Harry looked back, and tried to let everything shine through his eyes, though as always he wasn't sure he succeeded.

For a moment, he knew he had, because it was there in Draco's eyes, shining back at him. And then Draco turned away again as Ron and Ian looked at them, and his voice continued the thought their shared look had interrupted.

But Harry had a name for it now, and he thought the same word applied to Draco, even if he would deny it aloud.

_Love._


	36. Together in the Dazzle

As soon as they stepped outside the Ministry, Harry could pick the reporters out of the crowd. They tried to lounge casually, but they never _did_ manage it. He thought it was something that got trained out of them when they were taught alertness and attention to the finer details around them. That training was more valuable than not for writing articles, but it meant they appeared like hounds on the scent to anyone who knew what to look for.

Too, he knew some of them by sight. The tall woman straightening up on the far side of the crowd was Sylvia Abernathy, one of the _Prophet's_ more persistent gossip columnists. The man who was thin all over--thin glasses and eyebrows and moustache to go with everything else--represented the _Cackler,_ a paper that mostly reported _Quibbler-_ style about conspiracies but would follow any scandalous story about a wizarding world celebrity they could find. And there were a few others who opened their mouths and started yammering the minute they saw him.

Harry grimaced. This was why he hated doing things like this. Nod and look vaguely above their heads, give them nothing, and he stood some chance of holding his own in this contest.

But Draco had begun to swagger as soon as he saw them, his hand resting on Harry's shoulder and his smile so sharp that Harry thought it would slice the _Cackler_ bloke's head off when he stared at him, and Harry reckoned that he couldn't ask him not to have fun. He followed along behind Draco in a resigned way as they came out onto the street and the reporters churned a way through the casual stream of people passing back and forth from the Ministry on legitimate business.

 _This is a legitimate business, too, Harry._ He could almost hear Hermione's voice scolding him. _Just because you don't like it..._

Harry would like it better if reporters had some basic manners, but none of them knew what the word "dignity" looked like. Abernathy had her Quick-Quotes Quill poised near his face before he could duck behind Draco.

"Mr. Potter," she said, and gave him a smile so syrupy it would have made Rita Skeeter's jaw drop in shock. "Can you tell us, how soon are you leaving the marriage with Mr. Malfoy? Of course he'll tie you down and try to force you to commit to him, and I don't think that's a good idea for someone with as...long and _varied_ a sexual record as you have."

Oh, she was good, Harry had to acknowledge. It wasn't just the smile, but the elaborate pause in her voice, as though she was searching for words that wouldn't hurt him. A few of the other reporters had stopped to stare at her in admiration.

Too bad for her that Draco wasn't one of them. (Though Harry did have a sudden flash of what Draco might act like if he reported on gossip and had to bite hastily on his lip to stifle a snort).

Draco took a step around Harry and smiled at Abernathy. "I'm sure you'll want to know that you're using the wrong name for Harry," he said. "He should be addressed as Harry Malfoy, due to the nature of the marriage bond." He paused, then added thoughtfully, "Fancy someone like you, who's spent so much time with pure-bloods, not knowing that."

A high flush colored Abernathy's cheekbones, and Harry had to work hard to stifle a chuckle, this time. He remembered hearing that her family wasn't pure-blood, but that she had worked hard to make people think so. 

"My apologies," Abernathy said, becoming even softer and more polite, the way she had a gift for doing in the face of provocation. It was one reason Harry hadn't turned to insults when he spoke to her. He would always come out looking worse, no matter what he said. She faced Harry again and gave him a sort of sympathetic smile that seemed to argue she and Harry were alone together, facing a world of hostile, prejudiced pure-bloods. "Mr. Malfoy, then. When do you intend to leave--Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry smiled at her. He could see it would frustrate her, having to call two people by the same last name, and that gave him a flash of inspiration. "You still have the name wrong," he said coldly. "It's Auror Malfoy."

Draco's left arm was behind Harry's back. When Harry spoke the Malfoy last name as though it was his own, Harry felt Draco's fingers scraping up and down his arse. Draco's hand had curled in what seemed to be shock. Harry made sure he kept any smile off his face and eyed Abernathy sternly.

She did a little bow of her head and said, "Auror. When do you--"

"You've had them long enough, Sylvia, it's my turn," the thin man interrupted, and bustled up, inserting himself in a little gap between Harry and Abernathy's elbows. "We've seen lots of pictures of you admiring non-human beasts and beings, Malfoy. Who gave you the best ride?"

"I'd say Firebolt," Harry said obediently. Ron and Draco had come up with a list of the most likely offensive questions and prepared him with some answers. "I was once loyal to Nimbus, of course, but I'm afraid their brooms just can't compare with the newer and more expensive Firebolt models."

The thin man looked blank. Abernathy laughed at him and shoved him out of the way with her arse as she faced Harry again. "That isn't what we're talking about, and you know it," she said, her eyes sparking as though she was glad that Harry had turned out to be a worthy opponent after all. "We want to know who fucked you the best."

"The Ministry's fucked me over many a time," Harry said. That wasn't a question on the list of questions, but he saw no reason that he couldn't turn it around on Abernathy. Draco hadn't interfered so far, and Harry knew he would have if he disapproved of Harry's performance. "I can't give too many details that would lessen the public's trust in our leaders, of course, but--"

" _Enough_ ," Abernathy said, in a louder voice than Harry had thought that slender chest could contain. Well, he reckoned that she had to be able to surprise him some of the time or part of the challenge would be gone from confronting and evading the reporters. "We want to know who you had sex with, and right now. The trust of the public in _you_ is at stake, Auror Potter." She pointed her quill at him, her face flushed, and Harry saw something in her eyes that he hadn't expected. She believed this story, or at least part of it, and she was _disappointed_ in him. "They will want to know whether they've been loving and admiring a sex maniac, someone who only cares for the latest bed he can jump in and out of--"

"The only beds Auror Malfoy has been in during the past few months are the ones that I approved."

Harry jerked. He had been going to let Abernathy play herself out, but he had reckoned without Draco, who stepped forwards and let his own grin glint at her. It shone jaggedly enough to make Abernathy take a step back. Draco went on speaking into the silence he had created as smoothly as though he had planned this all along.

"Harry has two lovers at the moment, Auror Ian Shelborn and me. He certainly couldn't have gone on most of the liaisons that you think he had without inviting me along. And those photographs that you put so much stock in?" Draco moved his fingers, and a photograph torn out of the paper, the one that showed Harry supposedly snogging a dark-haired man, appeared in his hand. "Fakes."

Draco was a quick study, Harry had to admit, in things other than how to irritate him. He'd memorized the spell that Ian taught him within seconds. He murmured it now, and the enchantment on the photograph visibly tattered and spiraled away, revealing the original of the picture: Harry standing in front of the man, staring into his eyes, as he bound him with the ropes of the _Incarcerous_ spell.

There was a rising murmur of excitement from the back of the crowd. Harry smiled. He suspected that many of them were only interested in a story they could write down and claim ownership of, which meant that it wouldn't matter to them where that story came from or who it concerned. There was just as much material to sell papers in declaring that Harry Potter was a wronged hero as in declaring that he was "the Salacious Savior," as the _Cackler_ had put it that morning.

Well, maybe not _quite_ as much, Harry admitted to himself a moment later. But the papers had published so many photographs that there wasn't much to fall back on if they wanted to continue the story. A new twist, like Harry being a victim after all, would make them happier than repetition of stale facts.

"That can't be true," Abernathy said, looking as though someone had killed her kitten. "We--we all saw them, we saw _all_ of them, there's no way that all of them can be false..."

In silence, Draco held up the picture of Harry and the horse that Harry remembered from the case where the Dark wizard had enchanted pets to kill. Again the spell, again the smoke, again a photo that was perfectly innocent. Harry grinned at Draco, who twitched a corner of his mouth in response but didn't look away from the reporters in front of him.

"I would think," Draco said, his voice traveling out like a whip that Harry could almost see coiling around Abernathy's neck, "that the _Daily Prophet_ would know their own photographs better than this. Since those pictures were the basis for the deception..." He got to trail off and look smug, which Harry was already beginning to suspect was one of his favorite things in the world.

"That doesn't mean all of them are false," the man from the _Cackler_ said suddenly. "Or even that the ones you've shown us are! You could have _put_ an enchantment on them that would make them appear innocent, because you want your husband out of trouble and the scandal is embarrassing!"

Other voices piped up agreeing with him, while someone else began to claim that they knew the incantation and it was only used for revealing the truth, not hiding it. Harry raised an eyebrow at Draco, who looked more annoyed than resigned. They'd tried, and Ian and Ron had other strategies up their sleeves.

Only Abernathy didn't join the growing cacophony. She stood still, except for a slight swaying, her eyes locked on Harry. Harry frowned. Had she taken the undermining of her story that personally? He didn't think she was the one who'd written the _Prophet's_ report on the photos.

Then she reached down and drew her wand.

At the same time, the air filled with the heavy, sweetish scent of decay.

Harry reacted instinctively, spinning around and dropping Draco to the ground, behind him. He fell into a defensive crouch beside Draco and looked frantically at the crowd, wondering how he would protect them from the vines and the flowers that had apparently planted the beast in Grayson.

Then Abernathy shouted, and Harry realized he might not have to worry about that as a blast of pain and power took him in the chest and sheered what felt like a huge patch of skin away. He fell, twisting over to try to fire back, and skidded in something large and wet. When he looked down, he realized it was a pool of his own blood, already an inch deep.

 _This is bad,_ he thought, muzzily. _This is very bad._

*

Rage such as Draco had never known stirred to life in him when he heard the rings buzz and saw Harry fall, his chest ripped open to expose the heart.

But the rage was because Harry was dying, and Draco had to prevent that no matter what, not go after Abernathy. He raised his wand and spat out a spell that he would normally never use in front of the Ministry, a Dark incantation that spread a shimmering, impenetrable shield over them. He dropped down beneath the mist of dark purple and turned to Harry. He would have to hope that the decay magic it seemed Abernathy wielded couldn't eat through the shield, as it had done with the Ministry wards his mother had discovered.

All this traveled through his mind and body in a splinter of a second.

Harry was dying. That much was obvious to Draco. Bleeding out, no one could survive that much blood, Draco's knees and legs were soaked in it. There was very little that would even keep him stable until someone could move him to St. Mungo's, not least because the movement alone would probably kill him.

But there were spells that might increase his chances of survival.

 _Sanguis, sanguis cruore,_ Draco thought in his head, because a nonverbal spell would be faster than a verbal one and speed mattered right now. He had no trouble putting enough force behind the spell, which was sometimes a problem when one was used to casting spells aloud only. Now, the magic leaped and ripped through him, slicing hard enough at his veins that he winced. But that was part of the point. The magic had to escape, and he was the conduit.

The magic bore a stream of blood with it, starting at his arm, though no cut was visible; it simply opened a vein and flowed into Harry. Draco was casting healing spells at the same time, tying together ragged strips of skin, creating a covering so that his own blood wouldn't immediately flow out again. He was growing steadily weaker, but the spell he had cast was the most powerful one he knew, the only one that could adjust itself in the face of continuing weakness, and if anything could save Harry, then he knew it would.

As Draco fell lower and lower beside Harry and his vision blurred and grew faint, he thought he saw movement outside their shield. Well, tough. If it was enemies, they hadn't managed to burn through yet. If it was friends, they could help the most by fighting Abernathy and not interfering with what Draco was trying to do for Harry. Clumsy healing spells or, worse, a misaimed _Finite_ at the wrong time could undo Harry's chances of survival.

Draco knew that his own clear, cold mask of glazed ice over his emotions was a deception, that it would break in a while and his screams would leak through. Well, that was too bad. He would have to do what he could while he could, and if Harry survived, that would be more than he had _thought_ could happen.

Hope wasn't thought. Hope wasn't rational.

The blood flow looped back and forth between him and Harry; as he weakened, the spell picked up the blood lying on the ground, Harry's blood, and poured it into him, so that he in turn could grow stronger and continue contributing the blood and weaving the skin that would keep Harry alive. Draco was vaguely aware that there were dangers to this, that wizards had died doing this, because a wizard's blood carried magic just as every other part of his body did and another wizard's body sometimes rejected that power. But, well, without it Harry would die. That made it as good as having no choice, where Draco was concerned.

His vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again. The magic continued to make the rounds, tying them together, joining them together, transforming them together. Draco wanted to yelp in tiredness and collapse, but that would be stupid when it was still working. The magic would have stopped at once if Harry was dead, because the wizards who had invented it saw no point in killing two people.

As long as Draco could see that stream pouring through his uncut flesh, then Harry was still with him.

He pulled together two strips of skin above Harry's heart, panting. Then he sat back and stared down at a ragged but whole chest, the rents and slashes in it wounds of the kind that Draco thought someone could survive.

The magic stopped flowing.

For long moments, the world contracted, and Draco could feel the heartbeat in his own chest even more powerfully than the buzzing of the ring. The ring that would have fallen from his finger, he reminded himself, if Harry was dead. The ring that felt suddenly heavier, but Draco couldn't look at it right now; his eyes remained locked on Harry's chest, the way it was trembling.

The way it began to rise and fall.

Draco closed his eyes and leaned his head on Harry's legs, heedless of the blood smearing his cheeks and sticking to his hair. He knew that the Healers at St. Mungo's would have to do other things, that weaving skin back and contributing blood wasn't enough, but for a moment he let himself go and spoke silent thanks to whatever power wanted to receive it.

Then he conjured a stretcher, lifted Harry onto it with the gentlest of gentle spells, and looked up to see how the battle outside the shield was going, whether he could safely drop it or not.

Both Weasley and Shelborn were pounding on the shield, and it looked as though Abernathy had either escaped or someone had safely downed her, because Draco didn't see a sign of her. Either way was good enough for him. As long as she wasn't in the immediate vicinity, then she couldn't hurt Harry. He turned, placing his body as a barrier between Harry and his friends so that they couldn't hurt him accidentally, and then lowered the shield. He was staggering with tiredness, he realized abruptly, and needed the floating stretcher himself to keep upright.

"What _happened_?" Weasley's hair was literally standing on end, and for once it wasn't the reddest thing about him. The blood that smeared his robes was gleaming and sticky and sickly, and Draco had to look away from it. That was blood that had been outside the shield, and so outside the range of the Blood Transfer Spell he had cast to save Harry's life.

"Someone cut Harry's chest open," Draco said. "St. Mungo's. Now."

For once, neither Weasley nor Shelborn demanded arguments or explanations. They gathered up the edges of the stretcher, and Shelborn Apparated them. Draco blinked as they landed in a bright, clear room, which moments later was filled with shouts and scurrying mediwizards. He sat down hard in a chair, awaiting the moment when they would move Harry to a room, so that he could go with him.

He looked at his left hand. He had reached out for Harry's left hand without even realizing it, linking their rings together.

On both rings was a new band of metal, a heavy, dull one that Draco stared at without recognition for long moments. Well, the blood that covered everything certainly didn't help.

Iron.

Iron, the metal that ran in blood. Iron that was the sign the partners in the marriage had spilled their blood for one another.

Draco closed his eyes and had to fight back a hysterical giggle. Well, this was one way to create that band for the ring.

*

"...a real lead at last."

That promising sentence brought Harry up out of the darkness. He became aware that he was breathing with the aid of magic--that constricting sensation around his chest and nose was unmistakable--and grimaced. He always hated it, and he'd had more than his fair share of experience with that spell, since there were a few times after his escape from the darkness when he'd stopped breathing in the middle of his panic attacks.

He opened his eyes and turned his head, procedures that shouldn't have made him feel as if he were trying to cast a defensive spell with his left hand while fighting off three Dark wizards with his right.

Draco sat beside the bed, his left hand still linked and locked with Harry's. Harry's gaze went to him first, and stayed there, because he knew without asking, the way Draco's gaze lingered on him and clear sparks glowed in his eyes, that he had come close to dying and Draco had saved his life.

Again.

 _At least we already have the platinum band in the ring,_ Harry thought. For some reason, it seemed incredibly important.

"Mate!"

Ron tried to hug him, which, given all the bandages on Harry's chest as well as the way that Draco refused to let go of Harry's left hand, was a bit awkward. But Harry held Ron and patted his shoulder with his free hand, murmuring, and Ron made a noise like he was swallowing tears, and it was more than all right.

"Harry. Welcome back."

Ian was watching Harry with eyes that were so brilliant Harry had to squirm a little, even though he was lying in bed and there was a Healer coming through the doorway at the moment who raised a protest against exactly the kind of squirm that Harry wanted to do. "Thank you," he said. "What happened, exactly? I know that Sylvia Abernathy was using decay magic, but I don't know what spell she hit me with."

"A spell that tore your chest away," Draco said, and from the savage creaking in the back of his voice, he wanted Harry to pay attention to him. Harry rolled his head over again, and the sparks that he could see, or thought he could see, rising from Draco immediately calmed. Draco smiled at him and reached out, fingers tracing his collarbone as though checking for breaks. "I used another one that transfers my blood to you and gathered up the fallen blood to send back into my veins."

"I don't understand that part," Harry said, after thinking about it for a few seconds. "Wouldn't it have been easier to force the blood on the ground back into me?"

Draco shook his head. "Magic works strongly with cycles and circles, not so much with reversing the effects of another spell. Even _Finite_ could only have removed Dark magic that was preventing you from healing, not given you your blood back. Plus, it would have been a bit useless without the skin to hold it in," he added dryly. "So I worked the skin, and the magic set up a cycle that would feed strength to me as I lost it and feed _you_ strength as you lost it. When the magic reached a balance that meant you wouldn't immediately die, we could move you. But the Healers here did almost as much as I did."

"You don't believe that," Harry said quietly. Draco's eyes got that glow they only had when he knew he had saved Harry. 

Draco tilted their hands in response. The rings had a new band, Harry saw when he glanced down. Iron.

"Do you mind?" Draco asked.

"I--of course not," Harry said, though if Ian's gaze had made him want to squirm, Draco's made him want to run out of the room. "It was just--unexpected, that's all. And of course, I thank you for saving my life."

"Out of here, now," the Healer said, who had been hovering in the background and looking more and more agitated as the conversation went on. "Auror Potter's still not strong enough for visitors."

Ron and Ian left, though not without squeezing Harry's hand on the way, but Draco stayed right where he was. The Healer seemed used to that, since she rolled her eyes and started working around him.

"I hope that we at least can stop this from happening again," Harry whispered, closing his eyes as exhaustion began to press on them.

"Oh, we didn't mention it, did we?" Draco asked. "They took Abernathy alive. And it seems she's a full conspirator, not an innocent victim."

That allowed Harry to smile as he slipped into sleep again. 

Well, that, and the kiss he felt Draco press on his wedding ring.


	37. Through the Same Wars

Draco glanced up when the door to Harry's room opened, ready to speak an admonition to Harry's friends to be quiet. He understood that they would want to visit him, but really, he needed rest and the presence of his spouse.

That last wasn't bragging. The Healers had discovered, when they tried to chase Draco away from Harry's bedside, that Harry started muttering and tossing in his sleep, sounding sad and lost and distracted. The moment he could feel Draco's hand resting on his, or the presence of Draco's ring, then he would relax and smile, laying his head down as he drifted further into dreams.

But the one who entered the room was his mother. Draco surged to his feet, then remembered the need to keep contact with Harry and sat back down, but he was making her as welcome as he could with his eyes.

His mother saw him and knew it. She smiled as she kissed his cheek and sat down in another chair that appeared from nowhere; Draco thought a Healer might have pushed it into the room behind her or she might have Transfigured it. He didn't care. His whole mind was focused on the brightness of her eyes, and the warrior-like set of her mouth.

"What is it?" he asked. "Has something else happened? Did they lose the woman they captured?" That was the only thing he could imagine that would make his mother look like that, at least once she'd had time to hear about the news of the attack on Harry _and_ that they had both survived.

"This cannot go on," Narcissa said quietly, looking at Harry asleep in the bed. Her hands clenched in her lap.

Draco thought he understood, then, and fell silent. His mother's air enforced a general belief that she didn't want anyone to speak right now. 

"He has nearly died," Narcissa said, "three times in the last three weeks. That--is too much. We must find a way to keep him safe."

"I think he will be, now," Draco said. "They took a woman who seems to know a lot about these decay wizards. And the Aurors want Harry safe, too. They'll make sure she talks." He thought of Weasley's eyes and shuddered a bit. He wasn't sure that he'd want to sit in on that interrogation.

_These fools might imagine that Dark magic does the most damage to someone else, but Light spells wielded by Light wizards determined to get at the truth could hurt, too._

"That is not enough," Narcissa said. "The world seems conspiring to destroy him, and I will not let anyone destroy a member of our family."

Draco blinked, then said gently, " _Seems_ to conspire, Mother. That doesn't mean that anyone except the decay wizards and perhaps some of the reporters actually want to destroy him. Even Pansy probably thought that I really didn't want to stay married to him, and she would provide me with a convenient out." His hands clenched as he thought about it. He could understand Pansy's motivations, but he couldn't excuse them, and soon she would find out exactly how angry Draco was about what she'd done.

"We must find a way to keep him safe, whether the conspiracy is real or not," his mother said, with a calm disregard of what he had said so far. She folded her hands in her lap and gave Harry a searching look, as if she could see into his soul. "I would suggest moving him into the Manor and advising him to take a holiday off work, but that is not something he would agree to."

Draco shook his head with weary amusement. "No matter how much sense it would make. Especially not now that they have a real lead on his case." He reached out and let his hand glance off his mother's shoulder. "He's survived, Mother. So far. And closing this case and arresting the wizards responsible will help enormously."

"But it is not the only thing needed to keep him safe." Narcissa looked meditative now. "Considering the way that Pansy fed photographs to the paper concerning him, and the paper lapped it up."

Draco nodded. He could admit that that had angered him. "But you've poured the potion into Pansy's tea by now?"

Narcissa nodded back. "It was in powdered form in the tea I sent her, with the letter in which I hinted that I had her to thank for driving Harry out of the family, something I implied I had wished since the first day he married you." Draco smirked. Precisely because Pansy wanted to think she had done Draco a favor by freeing him of this "unwanted" marriage, she would read a favorable meaning from his mother's ambiguous wording. "Even if she did not drink the tea directly, only touched the letter, she will be itching by now, in many--intimate places. And the potion will progress onto the second stage in two days."

The second stage would mean a foul-smelling and painful venereal disease. Draco didn't think it too great a punishment for Pansy. "So that is handled."

"I want to make it _impossible_ for anyone to ever do this again," his mother said, eyes fastened on Harry's gently rising and falling chest. "I want to show them that Harry is a Malfoy, and not to be trifled with."

"Then come up with a method that you think will keep him safe, and we'll discuss it together," Draco said, with a subtle squeeze of Harry's hand that he knew his mother wouldn't miss. "After what's happened with him so far, I don't want to do something that he doesn't know about."

"You're a good husband, Draco," his mother said, with a distant look in her eyes that made Draco suspect she was thinking of Lucius. She rose now, kissed him gently on the cheek, and departed in the direction of the hospital entrance.

Draco turned and watched Harry again. His face was pointed towards Draco, as it usually was, and the calm, reassuring sound of his breathing never faltered. The Healers had told Draco that there was still an hour or so, after their arrival in hospital, when they might have lost him. He was out of danger now.

But he had been in it. And Draco suspected that he would always be in some senses, even if all the decay wizards were caught and captured. There would be people who remembered what Harry Potter had done before he was Harry Malfoy, people who wanted to destroy him for that, or fight him, or get revenge on him, or hurt him to see him squirm. Draco didn't yet know why the decay wizards had made him a target, but he suspected that it would come down to one of those reasons.

He needed the protection of a proper, proud, powerful family, and the lie they'd spread in the first place when they wanted to excuse the marriage--that Harry wanted the privacy and security to be found behind Malfoy wards--would quite possibly need to be the truth.

Draco squeezed Harry's hand. He had meant what he told his mother. He would do nothing without Harry's knowledge. He would ask his permission before he took huge steps. He would make sure that Harry was well before he broached any extraordinary changes in their relationship, anyway.

But he _was_ going to ask Harry to put off the ritual for a while, and to stop thinking of breaking the marriage bond for a time. How could Draco let him go when he knew that doing so would put him in danger?

*

Harry was awake, and well, and well-fed, and that meant it was time for what he privately termed his Annual Disagreement With Healers. He sat up in bed and smiled at the mediwitch who hovered over him. She seemed to have taken on a sterner tone because Draco was out of the room for the moment, getting something to eat. Did she think that Harry would be easier to convince than he would? Ha.

"I can go back to work," Harry stated, his opening salvo. "You said yourself that I have no ill effects from taking my husband's blood into me, and my chest isn't suddenly going to burst open and ruin all your efforts."

"You are still weak," said the mediwitch, reading, Harry was sure, from a mental book. Anyone who looked at him would see that he wasn't weak. "You need more food, more rest."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And you really think that my devoted husband, who waited by my bed so often that you got used to him, would let me suffer on that score? His Manor is full of food and, well, soft fluffy beds." No need to tell her that he wouldn't be using any of them until tomorrow.

The mediwitch hesitated and glanced over her shoulder, as though hoping that more senior Healers would show up to rescue her. Harry felt a little sorry for her, but not much. After all, if the Healers had only been interested in _really_ estimating the state of someone's health, they would notice that he had plenty of roses in his cheeks and that he'd slept most of the last day. And he'd had all the appropriate Healing potions, too. There was no reason to keep him here.

"I suppose," the mediwitch said at last, speaking so reluctantly that Harry heroically held back the resolve to snicker, "that you can go home if you really think you can handle the change."

"Thank you," Harry said, and then waited, smiling, at her until she took the hint and scurried out of the room, still staring at him over her shoulder. Harry reached for his clothes with a sigh.

"Where are you going?"

Draco. Harry jumped a little, but didn't look up from his dressing. Draco wasn't going to scream at the sight of the scars, the way that Harry had been more than a little afraid the mediwitch would. "To attend Abernathy's interrogation. There are some questions that I'm the only one who knows enough to ask her."

Draco walked further into the room and shut the door behind him. Harry didn't really like the way he stood in front of it, stolidly, as though he imagined Harry would have more trouble cutting through the barrier of flesh and muscles than the barrier of wood. "I don't like the idea, Harry," he said quietly, sincerely, sounding as though he meant it. "You really do need more rest."

Harry rolled his eyes at Draco this time. "Why does everyone keep saying that?" he complained, and bent down to pull his boots on. "It's not as though I'm pale anymore, the way you told me I was when you first brought me here."

"No," Draco agreed, with a calm that Harry knew was deceptive and distrusted for that reason, "but you are breathing awfully fast for someone who's done nothing more stressful than getting dressed."

Harry rocked back on his heels and stared at Draco. Draco didn't move, simply standing there with a patient gaze that said he wasn't going to let Harry out of the room.

Harry sighed. "All right," he said. "Why? Is it just that you're worried about me? I know I came awfully close to dying, but cowering in a hospital room won't be that much better for me. I have to get out there, to show everyone spreading rumors that I _didn't_ die, and my enemies that they can't take me down with an attack so simple."

"I agree that you need to be seen," Draco said, and the corner of his mouth gave a violent downward twitch. "The _Prophet's_ attempts to explain what happened and why one of their reporters was involved are getting...creative. But I'm coming with you, and you're going to spend an hour in the Ministry, speaking with Abernathy or attending the interrogation or whatever is most important. Then home."

Harry hesitated, then waved his left hand, making the iron band spark sullenly. "What does this mean?"

Draco's gaze became even more intense, more difficult to meet. "That the spouses have shed blood for one another."

Harry nodded. "I thought it might," he said, which was a lie, but at least it came close to some of his wild speculations about what the iron might mean when he'd lain awake last night and Draco had dozed in the chair beside the bed. "And what does it mean, to have that many bands that weren't there on the original wedding rings?"

"My mother owled me some of the books about forced marriages from the Malfoy libraries while I was here."

Harry waited, but Draco said nothing more. In fact, his face seemed quiet, polished, calm, as though Harry had already agreed to spend no more than an hour at the Ministry and he had already told Harry everything he needed to know. Harry shook his head and gave in at last, asking, "What did they say?"

"They didn't give me answers, either." Draco took a step closer. "No one has ever added this many bands to the rings before. Some added a few of the same ones, some added metals that we haven't got to yet, but there's never been four--plus the original three, gold, silver, and copper--tying a pair together."

It was as hard to breathe, Harry thought dimly, as though the room was in the middle of a fire. He swallowed and turned his head away. Draco moved nearer, and nearer, and now his hand was on Harry's shoulder and his face was lowered, his nose nuzzling along Harry's neck.

"Will you agree to put off the ritual for a time?" Draco asked. "Until we can be sure that you're fully recovered from Abernathy's attack _and_ the spell I had to use to save you? I can't--" His fingers scrabbled across Harry's shoulder for a moment, as though searching for a better hold, and then stilled. "I can't let you go. Not like this. Not knowing that you might only survive the next few days because of Malfoy protection."

Harry blinked and reached up to cover Draco's hand with his own. "You sound more affected by the attack then I was," he said quietly. "Have the Healers seen you?"

"They've watched me all the time that I was around you, as if _I_ was the one who was going to snap and attack you." Draco's nostrils flared, and he backed away from Harry so that he could slam his fist into his palm. "They'll never stop distrusting my family because of what happened during the war."

"Our family," Harry said, and then, when Draco turned to him with a face like the sunrise, he wondered whether that had been the wisest thing to say. He put out one hand. Draco grasped it, thus taking away the "stop" gesture that Harry had intended his hand to convey. "Yes, I'll put the ritual off for a few days. But I do think that the Healers should see to you. You expended a lot of magic on me, and you can't have rested or eaten well for the last little while."

Draco nodded. "One of them will look at me, and then we'll go to the Ministry."

Harry opened his mouth to say that he could go alone, and Draco gave him an almost vicious glance. Harry lowered his eyes and nodded. After all, Draco was the one who had given him his life back, and he probably wanted to know what Abernathy could tell her interrogators as badly as Harry did. "All right."

*

As Draco had suspected, the Healers told him that he had nothing worse than a case of slight magical exhaustion, which he could sleep off at home in a single night. Ten minutes after they cleared him to leave, he and Harry arrived at the Ministry.

Harry stood taller once they were inside, losing any trace of shyness and diffidence in the face of Draco's opinion that he might have shown. He strode along, turning his head from side to side to meet the glances of Aurors who stared at him, calling out jokes and sharp responses to jokes and sharp questions. He was at home here, in a way that he patently wasn't at the Manor. Draco didn't think he would hesitate to take advantage of any food the Ministry could offer, or any luxuries.

He worked hard to stifle the jealousy that clawed at the inside of his throat. _He_ wanted to be the one to provide for Harry, to rescue him, to hold him close. This wasn't the best time, but eventually he would speak to Harry again about spending more time at home and eating meals there.

Abernathy was being held in a small office off the main corridor, not in the holding cells where one would automatically look. Draco wondered who had come up with that mildly clever twist, but he lost most of his other concerns when they stepped into the room and Abernathy's eyes immediately snapped around and focused on Harry, her body going deadly still.

Draco stepped in between her and Harry. There was no question in his mind of doing it, no moment when he considered not doing it. It simply happened, and he stood there with his hand lightly balanced on the butt of his wand, ready to strike and injure her if he needed to. The woman acknowledged him with no more than the flicker of an eyelash, watching Harry instead.

"Surprised to see me alive?" There was an odd tone in Harry's voice, almost coy. He edged around Draco. Draco moved to keep him safely protected, and Harry planted a hand on his elbow and shook his head. Though it was one of the hardest things he had ever done, Draco stayed still as Harry moved forwards to confront their enemy. "Yes. Your spell didn't kill me. Though I'm curious why you would want to, when so far your group has kept me alive."

"You're useless," Abernathy whispered. She seemed to have forgotten there was anyone in the room but her and Harry, and Draco suspected that Harry had done that on purpose. She _was_ more likely to talk this way, Draco reckoned. "You were going to be the sacrifice that would bring the beast fully into the world of the flesh, and let us draw on its power."

Harry's face went smooth and dangerous. This time, Draco angled his body in a different way, ready to spring on Harry and bear him to the ground if _he_ sprang at Abernathy.

"You wanted," Harry said, and stopped, sounding as if his mouth was so flooded with disgust that he couldn't continue. He resumed a minute later. "You _wanted_ this curse that I have, the one that takes away other wizards' power?"

"Of course." Abernathy sneered at him. "What did you think we were doing? Why did you think we were doing it? Of course that was the only prize worth risking everything for."

Harry backed a step away from her, and Draco knew the red-pale color of his face didn't come from fear. He was simply revolted, repelled at the thought that someone could _want_ to be the monster that he saw himself as, the one who could reach out and melt other wizards and take their magic into his scars.

"Why him?" Draco asked, almost fearing to get between them, and yet wanting to spare Harry the strain of being the only one asking questions. He saw the same conflict in the faces of the other Aurors standing around them, but Draco was the only one who had had the courage to speak up. "Why was he your first victim?"

"He has powerful magic, the most powerful we knew of," Abernathy said, watching Harry with the sort of yearning expression that Draco wanted to kill Shelborn for. "And the beast only responds to a sacrifice with magic like that. An _unwilling_ sacrifice. Kidnapping him and giving him to it would count."

Draco hissed under his breath. "And then..." He trailed off, not knowing how much Harry wanted revealed in front of a room of other people.

Abernathy didn't care about that. Draco doubted she had noticed his pause, with the way she was staring at Harry. " _Then_ ," she snarled, "he had the power, somehow, and he had escaped, and wouldn't share it. We were going to bring the beast into the world and slaughter it, so that when we devoured it, we would have its gifts. He managed that, but we don't know _how_ , and we wanted to capture him and take the knowledge from his head. Each time, something stopped us." She flashed Draco a quick glance that let him know she had hatred to spare.

"You are going to tell us the names of your confederates," Harry murmured to, his voice low and sweet, as if he were speaking to a lover. "And the people you enchanted, like poor Grayson, to make into another sacrifice."

"Why should I?" Abernathy was surging against her bonds as if she intended to rise from the chair, but she leaned back in it and gave him a hard, simpering smile. "When there is nothing of value that you can give us in return..."

"You don't want to know how I escaped, then?" Harry raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to know about the beast and how I killed it? Oh, well." He turned as if he was going to walk out of the room.

"No, no!" Abernathy's voice was choked, a nasty whisper. She leaned forwards. "You swear it?" she hissed, in a thick tone that made Draco want to spit. "You _swear_ that you'll tell us?"

"Tell you," Harry said. "But only if you tell us the truth in return." He had a hard expression on his face, one that Draco had never seen before. He didn't know who Harry was being hard with, exactly, Abernathy or himself. Probably both. "And it has to be under Veritaserum. I don't have any reason to conceal the truth, since I want a solution to this just as much as you do, but you have every reason."

"I swear it. I swear it! I'll give you legal permission." Abernathy's eyes shone. Draco looked away, a little sick.

"Including how you used the decay magic, and what it is, and why you tried to kill me this last time?" Harry asked.

"Oh, that's easy enough," Abernathy said eagerly. "The decay magic comes from the last beast we devoured, and we tried to kill you because we finally despaired of making you share your knowledge. But that was premature, eh?" She looked at Harry the way someone would look at a child who'd finally learned table manners.

Harry folded his arms. Draco stepped forwards and looped his arm around Harry's shoulders. Harry let out a slow, deep breath and then said, "Your answers first. Under Veritaserum. Then mine."

Abernathy nodded. "I swear it."

Harry nodded to the other Aurors in the room, and they began to move slowly forwards. Their gazes were on Harry, Draco noted in disgust, as though he was the dangerous one or the criminal here. He tightened his hold and whispered, "This is going to take longer than an hour, isn't it?"

Harry glanced at him with a small smile. "I'm afraid so," he said. "Sorry."

Draco shook his head. Two days ago, he knew, he wouldn't have got even the apology. "All right. But we'll go home afterwards."

Harry nodded, then turned around, with what amount of courage Draco would never know, to speak to the Auror in charge of the interrogation as he came towards them. Draco tried not to watch Abernathy, the parted mouth and shining eyes.

So all this had been done in a quest for power. Once, he would have found that motive much more understandable, if not sympathetic. 

But Harry had changed him.

Draco could only hope that he changed Harry at least as much.


	38. To Join, Separate

Harry prepared for the truth-telling session as carefully as he could, drinking a glass of water and, at Draco's insistence, eating a plate of the rather dry biscuits that the Ministry kept around for situations like this. He was thinking more about Abernathy than anything else, the hatred and the worship that had shown in her eyes when she looked at him, but one insistent fact kept pushing itself into his head, too.

Most of the people who'll listen to you know nothing about the beast, and some, like Ron, don't know everything. You have to decide how much you want to tell.

Which wasn't going to be everything, no matter what he'd promised Abernathy. Part of that was his own need, part of that was a professional practicality--he wasn't about to break down in front of people he needed to respect him as part of his job--and part of that was because he didn't care about keeping his word to a criminal.

He'd have to mention the way he had conquered the beast, of course. Harry shuddered as he thought about it. That had been the part he was most desperate to keep secret at first.

But if he could make it sound like a battle, like the conquest he'd just phrased it as in his mind, rather than eating...

He felt his shoulders relaxing. Yes, that might work.

"I wish you would tell me what you're planning."

Draco's hands slid down his chest; he was standing behind Harry's chair. Harry reached up to capture his wrists and hold them still. Among other things, there would be people pouring into this small, plain, barely furnished room soon, and he didn't think Draco would want them to see him touching Harry that way. "You know it," he said. "I'm going to tell her some things, but not all."

"That reassures me, at least." Draco's voice was soft puffs of breath right next to his ear. "I really was afraid that you would tell them everything, up to and including the parts you should only share with me."

"Why?" Harry turned Draco's palm over so that he could press his wedding ring into it. Ever since he woke up, there was this need to be near Draco, to touch him in random places and at random times. From the lack of moving away and general bristling, Harry reckoned it was welcome to Draco, too. "You know how hard I fought to shield some of those secrets."

"Because you're terminally honest?" Draco murmured in an acid tone. "And because you did make a promise, and in most cases, Gryffindors hold promises like that sacred."

"I'm no longer as much of a Gryffindor as I once was," Harry said. "Some of that comes from being married to a Slytherin."

Draco smiled and bent down as if he would kiss him. Harry found himself anticipating that moment, waiting, holding his breath, his heartbeat going so fast in his chest that he ordinarily would have sat down and put his head between his knees if he'd felt it.

"Am I interrupting?"

A soft, deferential voice, with a hint of yearning behind it. It could only be Ian. Harry sighed, leaned away from Draco's lips, and shook his head. "No. Please come in, Ian. Did Anderson send you?"

Draco's hands clamped down where they rested on Harry's chest, and he all but hissed at Ian, as if he was a tomcat defending its territory. Harry rolled his eyes, confident Draco couldn't see from this angle. It was reasonable for Draco to feel protective of Harry after what Abernathy had done to him, but he had been calm enough to acknowledge Ian as Harry's lover in front of dozens of witnesses right before the attack. Harry hoped that he hadn't gone backwards now.

*

Harry had said that he'd chosen Shelborn because he was pure-blood and would understand the sort of marriage bond that tied Harry and Draco together. As far as Draco was concerned, they understood each other perfectly in that moment, too.

Draco didn't want to share, and Shelborn knew that. And Shelborn wanted to remain at Harry's side until Harry dismissed him, and Draco knew that. He just hated it far more than Shelborn hated Draco's jealousy.

The moment stretched taut between them, so much so that Draco thought it would snap before it unraveled. Then Shelborn turned away and said, in a stiff voice that Draco couldn't help hoping that Harry would hate, "No. I came on my own, because I was worried about you. Was that wrong?" And this time he carefully kept his eyes only on Harry's face, though it meant that he had to look around quite a lot of Draco's body. Draco's temper escalated close to boiling; he had to bite his lip and turn his head to the side so that he couldn't actually attack Shelborn.

"No," Harry said. He didn't seem to feel the same clawing need to get rid of Shelborn that Draco did, but he did keep touching Draco's hand, and wasn't making any attempt to get rid of it now. Probably something to do with the iron band, and the fact that no one has ever had this many bands on their weddings rings before, Draco thought, attempting to breathe through the heavy red haze that seemed to have descended over his eyes. "Please, I--just step back outside for a moment, if you would?"

Shelborn nodded, and did. Harry promptly leaned back against Draco and closed his eyes, shaking his head. "What is this?" he whispered. "I felt it when we were in hospital, but it wasn't this bad, then."

Draco said nothing until he could reach down and twist their hands together, locking the rings. "I don't think," he said, his voice cracking, "that I mentioned everything the books my mother sent us said. Just that no one else that I could find or heard of had as many as four bands on their rings."

Harry blinked up at him. Draco had to push back the savage impulse to pin Harry to his chair and bite his throat until he cried for mercy and came. He cleared his own throat as Harry said, "No. Was there more?"

Draco nodded. "The--iron band does result in more protectiveness against anyone who can possibly be considered an enemy. I thought I was feeling it when I didn't want to leave your room, and when I felt uneasy that a Healer might harm you. It seems it goes deeper than that, though." He had to touch Harry's thigh, just sliding his hand lower and digging his fingers into soft flesh. Harry arched his neck, his breath stuttering. "Right now, what I want is to hide you away from anyone who could possibly see or touch you. That includes Shelborn." He thought of Abernathy coming into the room and seeing Harry, sitting close enough to touch him or hear him speak, and his rage whipped through him like a loose cord of steel.

"I--I think I would feel the same way if d'Alveda was here," Harry said, and then grasped Draco's hand, digging deep in turn. Draco welcomed the pain of half-crushed bones and tendons; it meant that Harry cared for him, wanted to stay with him, and that the new band wasn't affecting Draco alone. "Yeah," Harry said, voice snapping. "Definitely not a good idea to think about her."

"We need to put the ritual off for a time," Draco said. "And we need to--Harry, I need some assurance that you don't want to leave the marriage bond. Please," he added, when Harry tilted his head back and there was flaring surprise on his face. "I think it was because I thought of the Malfoy wards as being able to protect you when we were in hospital, and we've already been here longer than the hour I wanted. Please," he said again, feeling the desire rising in his bones, as urgent as hunger during starvation.

*

Harry swallowed. He wanted to get up and shut the door, shut Ian out, shut out the interrogation, shut out Abernathy and all the things he had promised to do and say and listen to. It didn't seem to matter right now that he had promised to speak about what had happened when he escaped the beast, not when he had decided on those things without input from Draco.

He wanted to go home, because that would make the hunted look disappear from Draco's eyes and he might smile again.

Harry shut his eyes and strove for clear thought. This iron band can be appallingly dangerous, can't it? Or maybe it's only dangerous because we didn't go home and rest behind the wards for a while. It wasn't as bad in St. Mungo's, which Draco must have accepted as generally safe.

He couldn't let the magic of the bond make the decisions for him, though. He stood up and turned to face Draco, reaching out to clasp his hand. He didn't move to look at him until he was sure that he could feel Draco's fingers beneath his own, and that they were real, something to anchor him in the spinning mass of his thoughts.

"Draco, listen," he said softly. "This is part of the reason that I wanted to escape the bond. I don't want it making decisions for us. You should have what you deserve, someone who chose you freely and wasn't frightened into choosing you. You wouldn't want me to agree just because I wanted not to distress you, right?"

"I need you to agree now," Draco said, his voice deep, his eyes bright with a passion that Harry had seen before in him, right after the time when Draco had rescued him from the decay wizards, but not so strongly. "I need it, Harry, or I don't know how I'll be able to stand having Abernathy in the same room with you."

Harry nodded. For that matter, he wasn't sure that he would make it through the conversation with her under the sudden impression that hit him now, slamming shut over him like a trapdoor: that she would attack Draco and Harry would lose him. He had to hold still and take a few deep, careful breaths until that impression slid past.

"I can make that promise," he said. "You're not asking me to stay forever, are you? Just to think about it, and put it off for a while?"

Draco shut his eyes. Harry had the impression that he would have liked to ask for more, but he was probably finding the overwhelming emotions as irritating as Harry. He nodded.

"Good," Harry said. "Then I make the promise. I'll put off using the ritual for a time, and stay within the protection of the marriage bond. And we'll go home the minute I'm done speaking to Abernathy," he added, because Draco still looked as though he was pulling against the traces of a heavy cart.

Draco slumped forwards, catching himself on the chair and swearing as he looked up. His eyes were wide. "I don't--I've never felt anything like that," he said breathily. "Harry, are you all right?"

"Of course I am," Harry said, smiling at him. His heart ached, his chest ached, and he still wanted to shut the door and make sure Draco was safe. "It affected you more than me, probably because I was the one who nearly died in your arms."

"I'm glad you realize that." Draco was staring at him like a hawk, and at least Harry's desires were shared.

Harry gave in to them enough to lean forwards and kiss him. Draco put one hand on his hip, one on his arse, and gave back as good as he got, to the point that someone had to noisily clear his throat from outside the room before Harry realized that the door had opened all the way.

"We're ready," Ian said, giving him an unfathomable look in the moments before he turned around and nodded to the other Aurors to escort Abernathy in.

Harry cleared his throat and refused to glance over at Draco, who was smiling in contentment. Of course he would be less embarrassed when someone found him kissing Harry; he'd been in favor of this marriage for a lot longer than Harry had.

Yes, but the one he was in favor of was the kind of marriage where you would probably never kiss except to satisfy Narcissa or some photographer who wanted to know how well we were getting along.

Yes, Draco had changed. And as the harsh protectiveness the iron band imposed on Harry eased and he squeezed Draco's hand, he could admit that he had, too, and would probably change further.

It's not falling hopelessly if you have someone there to catch you.

*

"...And that's the way I escaped from the beast." Harry reached out and picked up the glass of water that Shelborn had brought for him. Draco would have done that, but Shelborn had beaten him to it this time. There would be future times when he didn't. Draco contented himself with that, and with watching Harry's throat work as he swallowed. Harry put the glass back down and focused on Abernathy, who sat chained in the chair across from him. "Does that answer your questions?"

Draco looked from face to face. In the end, the large audience he'd feared had been reduced to a few people: Shelborn and Weasley, whom Harry trusted; the frowning Head Auror; and Anderson, in charge of this investigation now. There were other Aurors waiting outside the door, with wands drawn, in case Abernathy moved, but they had been walled out with a ward that blocked sound.

What Harry had said, although not the whole truth as Draco understood it, was more than enough. Shelborn was staring at him with a drawn face. Weasley had long since reached out and put a hand on Harry's shoulder, holding it there as though he thought his best mate would collapse without his support. Anderson looked sick, and now and then glanced at Abernathy and then away as if he assumed she would change into a beast herself. That would have been fine, except he looked at Harry with the same expression, and that was not fine.

The Head Auror showed the least reaction, but then, he had been the one to come up with the lies that covered Harry's disappearance in the first place. He nodded now and said, "I think Ms. Abernathy owes us the return of courtesy under Veritaserum that she promised."

"Just a minute," Abernathy said in an appealing tone, eyes fixed on Harry. "I don't understand. Why you? Why did you manage to escape that way?" Harry had told her that he'd simply overmastered the beast with his will and magic, rather than eating it. "No one else could have done that. Why you?"

Harry gave a bland smile. Or, at least, it looked bland. Draco suspected that one would have to be as close to Harry as he was in all ways, mentally and physically, to recognize the bitterness layered beneath it.

Draco edged a step closer to him. Harry turned his head slightly towards him, as if to say that he appreciated the support but didn't need it. Draco disagreed with that conclusion, but it would be stupid to act that way in front of this crowd and possibly undermine their impression of Harry's strength. He forced himself to stop moving, and ignore the wild fantasies that suggested keeping Harry inside the Manor for the rest of his life was a good idea.

"Why me anything?" Harry asked softly. "Why did Voldemort choose to mark me, why did I survive where no one else did, why was I the one able to end the war and defeat him at other times?" He shrugged. "Destiny only takes you so far as an answer, and so does prophecy and even free will. It's just the way it was, and I've given up on asking questions that don't have answers."

Abernathy opened her mouth to complain, or argue, or continue, but Anderson stepped forwards and dropped the Veritaserum into place on her tongue. Good. Draco didn't want to listen to her speaking as though Harry was a disobedient animal who had tricked its trainers.

Abernathy shuddered, and the glaze of the potion spread over her eyes. She was still peering dreamily at Harry, though. Again Draco had to clench his teeth and control his impulses, in this case the one that wanted him to lean over in front of Harry so she had to look at him instead.

"How organized is this conspiracy, and how much of a conspiracy?" the Head Auror asked directly.

"Not a conspiracy," Abernathy whispered in a monotone. "A confederation. We meet in secret places, because we desire power, more than the weak wizards around us, and we knew that others would never understand, so we formed our federation in secret. We summoned one beast, a different one, from a place swarming with swamps, and we fed on it. That gave us the decay magic. But we wanted the power to take magic from other wizards, and that beast was harder to pin down and capture."

Draco would have liked to laugh at the looks of disgust on the Aurors' faces, but he was too busy breathing rage at what that made Harry. Just what Abernathy had already said, then: the most powerful sacrifice they could find. They wouldn't care about the soul that might have died with him if he hadn't been strong enough to fight his way free, about the personality, about the intelligence and the exasperating refusal to worry about himself and the reluctant, awkward coming-to-terms with his adopted family.

Be fair. You wouldn't have cared about any of those if Harry had died before you knew him, either.

Draco ignored that thought. No, he wouldn't have cared, but he didn't know about it, then. The decay wizards had had a chance to observe Harry, and they still had given him to the beast.

The Head Auror asked a few more questions about where they had met, how many people there were in the group, and what books they had used, and then returned to the subject Draco was most interested in with, "And how were you able to take Auror Potter so easily the times you captured him?"

"The decay magic rots defenses," Abernathy sighed. "And we had a few on the inside by then. It can also rot brains. We plant a seed, and it grows, and it sends tendrils through them."

"Is it recoverable?" Harry demanded suddenly. He leaned forwards past Draco, and also past Shelborn and Weasley, who had drifted into a sort of sheltering wall of their own. "Can someone you've taken over with it get their own brain back?"

Abernathy stared at him, and as much as she could feel emotion right then, Draco sensed she was surprised at the question. "I don't know. Why would we know? We never tested it."

Harry's lips wrinkled back, and he shifted for a moment as if he would rise from his chair and leave the room. Draco reached out to support him, and found Shelborn doing the same thing. This time, Draco didn't scruple to stare his hatred, and Shelborn turned his head to the side and looked away.

He also dropped the hand that had been reaching towards Harry, which was more to Draco's taste.

The Head Auror asked some more irrelevant questions. Well, presumably they were relevant to someone and would help them capture the people who had hurt Harry, but Draco didn't care right now. He wanted to get Harry home, to hide him and protect him and cradle him, and he didn't care how ridiculous his desires sounded when spoken out loud.

He looked hard at Shelborn and Weasley. Weasley got it first and nodded, moving forwards to speak softly to the Head Auror. He looked over and nodded, distantly uninterested, then returned to the interrogation.

Harry stood up, and gave Draco an annoyed look when he found out that part of the deal was Draco's arm around his shoulders. Draco shrugged back, unrepentant. The iron band was hammering protectiveness at him, and if Harry didn't feel it as strongly at the moment, that wasn't Draco's problem.

Luckily, before they had to get into an argument in front of everyone or Draco had to drag him out of there, Harry seemed to yield and get it. His nostrils flared wide and he nodded, and then actually consented to lean on Draco's shoulders as they worked their way out of the interrogation room. Draco didn't look over his shoulder and smirk at Shelborn in triumph, but it took all his self-control.

*

Harry stepped into the entrance hall of the Manor and looked around uneasily. Something was going to happen, he thought, something was going to burst through a door and attack them...

And then he snorted, and tried to force himself to relax. He was still feeling the paranoia that Abernathy's confession had stirred in him, and the effects of the iron. It was understandable, but no one would threaten them here.

"To bed," Draco announced, and began to march Harry down the middle of the hall. Harry realized that he was really being marched, his shoulders completely under the dominion of Draco's arm, and shook him off with a snort.

"I can find my own way--"

Draco turned around and stared at him. Harry swallowed and looked away.

"Good," Draco said softly. "Now. I think we'll be both much better off if we share my bed, as we've done twice before. That way, I won't be constantly rising in the middle of the night to check on you, and you don't need to worry about me, either."

Harry opened his mouth to respond. He intended to agree, though more because of the advantages it offered him to keep an eye on Draco than because he believed that he was actually in danger.

But he never got the chance to say that, because someone cleared his throat above them. Harry turned and looked up, his wand already in his hand.

Lucius Malfoy stood in the middle of the staircase, holding his hands high to show that he held no weapon. Harry hesitated, and Draco hesitated, and that was a moment too long.

"I revoke the marriage bond," Lucius said in a clear voice.

The blow that shuddered through Harry's body was a hundred times harder, a hundred times worse, than the one that had brought him to Malfoy Manor when the ring fastened itself to his finger. He felt his heart screaming, felt the scars on his back writhing and shuddering as though someone was trying to rip them out of his flesh. He thought he could hear the blood Draco had lent him sloshing back and forth, as if it could leap out of his veins and rejoin the original giver.

Draco screamed. Harry turned instinctively towards him. The air in between them was dark, and as he watched, three pieces of metal whirred past him, close enough that he could see them through the smoke. Gold, silver, copper.

But the pain grew worse, and there was still a burning pain in his finger that Harry didn't understand, and he slumped to the floor.

He did it with one hand outstretched, still trying to reach for Draco. He felt Draco's fingers brush madly over his, and then, the touch of metal.

A four-stranded ring, unbroken.

Then the darkness and the noise and the pain was all gone at once, and oblivion stole Harry away into an almost-pleasant silence.


	39. Half-Together

"What have you done?"

That voice made Draco smile even as he struggled to open his eyes and wondered why they felt as if they had been glued shut. His mother was speaking in her level, cut-glass tone, the one that could make Wizengamot members shut up and tread carefully around her. 

Of course, it might not work with someone who had had the lack of sense to hurt her son and son-in-law in the first place, such as decay wizards.

Or Lucius, who answered a moment later in the same haughty, cool tones. "I have separated them. This marriage was not good for him, Narcissa, and you know it. It was corrupting him, making him think of ideals detrimental to the strength and well-being of the family."

A pause, so long that Draco thought his mother might finally have encountered a pronouncement that could take her aback. Then she said in flowing tones that barely covered the steel core beneath, "If you think that, it is only because you have no idea of what true strength consists in."

The glue seemed to be peeling away. Draco moved his head to the side and opened his eyes.

They were on a large pair of couches in one of the downstairs sitting rooms that wasn't often used because, Lucius had said, there were so many couches that one really needed a full party, or a full family tree, to make it worthwhile. It had the most comfortable furniture in the house outside the dining room and their private bedrooms, however, and Draco wasn't surprised to find himself lying on a couch that felt like clouds under his spine. Beside him, as he could see when he turned his head a bit further, was Harry. Their joined, ringed hands dangled between them.

Draco swallowed as he stared at those rings. The neat braids that had made them up before were gone, the silver and copper and gold simply melted off. But the braids of four other metals, the ones he and Harry had put there, still clung stubbornly, although Draco's finger was black to the nail and Harry's hand was covered with blisters from the sundering of the rings.

The sundering of their marriage bond.

_Lucius tried to separate us._

Draco's humor and half-gentle recollections of what had happened stopped as his drifting memories caught up with him. He twisted around, snarling, barely aware that his mother had stood up and taken a step towards him, or that Lucius was backing away to the far wall of the room, his eyes watchful. Harry moaned as his arm was dragged by Draco's attempt to sit up, and that made Draco stop and remain still, breathing, although his eyes still darted between his parents.

"Well?" His voice cracked. He wished it hadn't when Lucius gave a superior smile and directed it at his mother.

"You see, Cissa?" he asked. "This marriage _is_ weakening him, encouraging him to falter in his convictions and in the skills we taught him. He would never have sounded like that if he hadn't married a Gryffindor."

"If you had not forced him, you mean." Narcissa took a step towards them and knelt between the couches, her hand hovering above their half-joined rings. Her eyes never left Draco's face, even when Lucius cleared his throat loudly. "Draco. I need you to listen to me carefully. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

Strangely, that pronouncement calmed Draco down. After all, no one had ever added four bands of other metals to a forced marriage ring, either. He nodded and leaned forwards so that the pressure and pull on Harry's arm was eased.

"The part of the bond that Lucius willed is indeed gone," Narcissa said quietly. "The bands that symbolized it tore apart. That, too, is something that never happened before. The rings would ordinarily have halved themselves, dropped from your hands, and then come back together again, ready to be used for the next forced marriage. But the bands you had created remained. We think you are--half-married. It is the only term I can come up with for it."

"That is not a term," Lucius said. "It does not exist. This state of affairs is not natural."

"It is not natural because no one else was ever stupid enough to do something like you, you are right," Narcissa said, still without turning around, and in the tone of voice that Draco knew she would have used to order a house-elf to bring in the next course. "Draco. Do you have any pain?"

"Just in my hand." Draco moved it experimentally. The finger that bore his ring ached, and when he moved further away from Harry, unlocking one of the half-melted bands that clung together, it made his breath come short and him feel as if he was going to bolt. He mastered that with an effort and smiled at his mother. "I understand if you need to take off the rings--"

"Lucius did try," Narcissa said, and no more than that, though with a sweet tone in the back of her voice that let Draco know that the effort had hurt. "No, Draco, I do not think this bond can be broken. But we don't yet know what the effects will be. For now, stay close to Harry and rest. When he wakes then we can learn more."

"I'm awake now."

Draco had to close his eyes against the utter flood of relief that tried to pour over him when he heard Harry's voice. He hadn't been _worried_ about something bad happening to him when he had seen the twisted rings, because Harry was still breathing. But there was a tight knot in him that would always ease when he had Harry awake and talking to him, because that meant he wouldn't face his problems alone.

"What happened?" Harry lay quietly, letting his eyes flit from Draco's face to Narcissa's. Like them, he utterly ignored Lucius, although he was lying in the right position to face towards him. Draco smiled, and the slow, smug coil of _rightness_ in his belly made him want to gloat. Lucius could take, or try to take, all he wanted from them. His attempts to manipulate them and force them simply ended up propelling them closer together.

Narcissa explained about the half-marriage. When she said the bond was too strong to be broken, Harry's face became drawn, but he nodded. Draco suspected that he had faced worse things in his time, and was used to getting past that initial rush of fear or disbelief so that he could _think_.

_What happens if the bond is permanent? At what point will his tolerance run out?_

Draco didn't know, actually, and didn't think that he or anyone else could answer the question yet. Harry had already promised to wait a little while before they tried to break the bond, so the matter was less urgent than it might have been.

"I fear to give you pain, but we must test the limits of the bond," Narcissa said. "The complete bond only dictated that you must live in the same house. Can you move apart now?"

Harry glanced at Draco, and Draco nodded. They broke the hold of their half-ring rings with a little twist, and then Harry stood and made his way experimentally towards the far door. Draco gritted his teeth, feeling a dragging pull in his belly that hadn't been there before.

"How painful?" His mother was watching his face.

"Getting more painful the further away he gets," Draco said. He tried to think about it, to quantify it more than that. It had started out as a physical pain, but when Harry stepped out of the entrance hall, around a corner of the door that meant Draco could no longer see him, panic abruptly hazed his vision and started eating at the corners of his concentration. "Mental now. Bring him back, bring him back, _please_." He heard Lucius sneer with disdain, but he couldn't help it; the fear didn't start to abate, no matter how he fought it, until Harry skittered back inside and came up to put a hand on his shoulder, staring at him in distress.

"This bond should have been ended long since," Lucius told someone or something that wasn't immediately apparent, perhaps the ceiling. "It does make him weak, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise, Narcissa."

"Think of who established the bond in the first place, and who is therefore responsible for the form it takes," his mother said, still refusing to turn a hair, and looked at Harry. "What did you feel?"

Harry hesitated, then shrugged and said, "As if I was leaving a part of my soul behind. Or my wand, when I was heading into a battle situation."

Draco nodded. As far as he could tell, that was an accurate description of it. And he didn't think he would be able to stand it unless they had a chance to make constant trials of it. He grimaced to think of what he would feel if Harry tried to go to work without him.

"What do we do now?" Harry asked Narcissa. His hand hadn't ceased rubbing Draco's shoulder. Draco reached up and clasped it, hard. 

"For now, go and sleep," his mother said softly. "I shall look in some of the books I have that speak about spells that are half-complete when interrupted, and rituals that do not succeed. I think those the closest equivalents."

"They're the ones who created the bands that still tie them together," Lucius said loudly. Draco thought he understood the loudness better now. Lucius was trying, desperately, to show that he wasn't _responsible_ for this, in some way that would actually convince other people. "If they both decided that they didn't want the marriage anymore, wouldn't the ring fall apart?"

Draco opened his mouth to say that was impossible, and unlikely, anyway, with the iron band encouraging both him and Harry to be more protective of each other. But his mother stood up and turned around before he could say anything.

He didn't know what expression was on her face. He didn't need to see it, though. The important thing was the effect it had on Lucius. He shut up and moved a step back, his face flushing as though someone had scolded him.

"You are the one who set up the marriage," Narcissa said, barely breathing the words. "Who refused to welcome our son-in-law to our family, and rejoiced in his discomfort. Who blamed our son for his response to the bond, and blamed him for not doing what you wanted, and would not simply dissolve the bond when it might have let both of them go, because he couldn't bear the lack of importance that would give to _himself._ If anyone is weak here, Lucius, if anyone here is at fault, it is _you_. And you will not convince others of your innocence and non-complicity by the way that you babble."

Draco saw Lucius clutch at the back of a couch for strength, and thought he might try to answer for a moment. But then he shook his head and stood tall, and Draco saw a fine tremor making its way through his body, one he thought Lucius would probably have gone to great lengths to hide, if he had known that anyone saw it.

"When you feel ready to ask for my forgiveness, Narcissa, I shall receive you," he said, with a haughty hollowness that made Draco want to turn his head away in embarrassment, and swept out of the room.

"Do we need him?" Harry asked, in the twanging silence left by his departure. "I mean, to figure out how to undo this half-bond?"

Draco turned on him, snarling before he thought about it. "You agreed that you wouldn't seek a way out of the bond right now!"

Harry raised a hand as if he thought that would calm Draco down, as if he _needed_ to be calmed down. His eyes were wary, but clear. "Listen to me, Draco. I did agree to that, but at the time, the marriage bond poised no clear dangers to us. I wonder now if this one might, the way it's been altered. It could certainly be dangerous to us if we can't separate." He turned to Narcissa. "What do you think?"

"I think it is past time that I began my research, and past time that you two had a private conversation." His mother stood and clapped her hands, and a house-elf appeared with a tray laden with so much food that Draco blinked. He hadn't thought an elf could lift that much. "I will make sure that Lucius does not disturb you, and once I have exited the room, the elves will not enter, either." 

Actually, as head of the Malfoy family, Draco knew that he could call the elves at any time he wanted, but he appreciated the lengths his mother was going to to make it seem as if they would have _real_ privacy, completely undiminished. He caught her eyes, and Narcissa inclined her head and left the room, back straight. She hadn't been smiling, he realized. Well. The situation was serious.

Harry shoved the two couches they'd been sleeping on closer together, and poked gingerly at the tray. The house-elf had set it up on a long, slender stem that locked to the middle of the floor. Draco knew from past experience that it was as sturdy as a table, but it must not have looked so to Harry. "Er. Are there plates?"

Draco shook his head. "The dishes we need cutlery for have it beside the plates on the tray. Otherwise, we eat with our fingers." He picked up a raspberry tart and held it out to Harry. "Open."

Harry blinked at him in confusion for a moment before his eyes darkened and he opened his mouth. Draco gently pushed the tart in, and tried not to get too caught up in either the delicate scrape of Harry's teeth against his finger or the warm curl of his tongue as he accepted the food.

Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head. Draco picked up another tart and waited. At the moment, he wasn't in the mood to take food except from Harry's fingers or mouth, and judging from the way that Harry's eyelashes fluttered madly along, he felt much the same way.

Although of course he would think that he shouldn't. _Typical Gryffindor._

*

Harry could feel the marriage bond as if it was an animal, wounded but still alive, running back and forth from him to Draco. Perhaps a snake was the best metaphor for it, because it would stretch and grow longer and thinner when they moved apart, then relaxed and loose again when they were close.

_How in the world am I going to protect him if he needs to come on Auror cases with me?_

Harry shook his head and opened his eyes to reach for a--well, he assumed it had been bread or a scone at some point, but it was decorated with so much cream and so many sliced berries he really wasn't sure what one would call it now. Draco's eyes shone as he watched Harry hold it out, and he opened his mouth in leisurely fashion, only moving his head forwards when Harry didn't reach out fast enough to suit him. His tongue curled lazily around Harry's fingers, wiping back and forth. Harry shuddered and had to concentrate on not dropping the dessert-thing.

"I think your mother left us alone so that we could talk," he gasped, pulling his fingers free at last when it became clear Draco had no intention of letting them go, "not so that we could feed each other."

"There's no reason we can't do both." Draco leaned forwards, bracing his hands on Harry's knees. That simple contact made Harry shiver. Draco smiled at him. "Or use our mouths in other ways," he added, and leaned forwards to kiss Harry.

Harry kissed him back, feeling the bond coil and loop them ever closer, while a small voice seemed to sing in the back of his head. The marriage bond wasn't compelling them to have sex now, he thought dimly, or at least he didn't _believe_ so. But it did mean that they were being pulled closer in some odd ways, and he could almost feel the bond flailing for stability, seeking some way to bind them that would substitute for the simple requirement of the forced bond that they live in the same house.

If they could tie themselves together this way, why not do it?

But Harry didn't want the first time he slept with Draco to be at the bond's behest, or because Draco was afraid of being left behind or Harry slipping out of his sight. When the kiss ended, he caught Draco's wrists, ignored Draco's attempt to shove them sprawling and backwards on the couches, and said quietly, "How much of this is you, and how much is the bond?"

Draco paused, the flame in his eyes flickering uncertainly. Then he shook his head and murmured, "You promised that you wouldn't try to break it."

"I won't." Harry had to kiss him again then, not to reassure Draco but to reassure himself. Draco shifted, groaning, and Harry groaned back. It was horribly hard to translate that into articulate speech, but he managed. "But there's a difference between staying in it and trying to figure out w-what's real, and just breaking it."

Draco shut his eyes and pulled back from nibbling on Harry's throat, which had made Harry stutter, with an obvious effort. "I know that," he whispered. "I _do_ know that." He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. "But, Harry, I want you so much."

"I want you, too," Harry said, and tried to ignore the fantasy image that blazed in his mind, of the two of them tangled together and writhing on the couches. "But we need to make up our minds as to what our next course of strategy is going to be."

Draco leaned back and looked wryly at him. "You have an instinctive gift for killing the mood, don't you?"

Harry laughed. "I would have thought that strategy was as sexual for you as anything else, given the strategies that you must have used to get ahead in your business and when you were fighting with other families." He picked up an ordinary piece of orange and offered it to Draco, who took it from his hand and ate it with a small smile. Harry nodded. _We really don't need to be offering each other food from hand to mouth right now, as tempting as it is._

"It's not all that sexual for me when I'm struggling to cope with how close I should be to a man I want," Draco said, and his eyes were still bright with that devouring flame. Harry took a deep breath and felt it leaping up and down the bond, dancing in coils around his chest.

"Understood," Harry said. "Now. We have to decide what's best. Do I stay in the house and work on cases from here, or do you come with me on the cases? I think the first part is probably best." _Much as I hate to miss work on things like capturing the decay wizards whose names Abernathy gave us._ "That way, we don't get exposed to danger, and no one realizes what's happened yet."

"Someone will find out eventually," Draco said. "The reporters who want access to us, for instance."

Harry smiled, and he knew, from the amount of admiration that Draco looked at him with, that the smile wasn't a pleasant one. "Do they _have_ to know about this? Do we have to go out to them? Or can we just give out the word that we're behind wards for the moment because we're worried about our personal safety after the attack on me? The attack made by a member of the press, even. I don't think anyone has reason to know that Abernathy is anything else."

Draco nodded slowly. "As long as we actually do remain behind the wards. They'll be watching us so closely that attempts to sneak out would probably be noted."

Harry snorted. "I have no intention of doing that unless the Ministry summons me, and then _they_ can bloody well provide the escort and the secrecy. Otherwise, we stay behind the wards, and figure out how to work the bond apart, and do paperwork--well, that's me, anyway--"

"I have paperwork I can do, as well," Draco interrupted, looking indignant that Harry would ever doubt that.

 _Or not wanting to be left out of anything I do._ Harry caught Draco's hand and squeezed it. "Good," he said. "Then we can continue some of the activities of our normal lives, and in the meantime try to figure out how to make the bond part of normal life." He didn't say "get rid of it," because the suggestion seemed to panic Draco, but he did think that that might end up being the only way they could free themselves from what Lucius had done to them.

He glanced again at the half-melted rings on their fingers. Platinum, steel, bronze, iron. Life, destiny, sanity, blood. 

It hit him then, so suddenly that he gasped aloud and attracted Draco's worried attention, how tied they had really become. Lucius couldn't part them when he tried to revoke the marriage bond, although everything Draco had told Harry about the forced marriages should have meant that their bond ended right there. They had shared and sealed themselves, and all that was a result of choices that Harry knew he would make again, and Draco would make again, if they had to.

_I hated the bond because I felt it left me with no choice. But now the forced part is gone, and all that's left are our choices._

Draco was staring at him when he looked up again. "There was an expression on your face," he breathed, when Harry cocked an eyebrow at him in silent question. "As though you'd realized something big, something important." He hesitated, then reached out and put one hand on Harry's thigh. "As though you wanted someone else," he said, voice choked.

Harry caught Draco's hands and deliberately kissed the half-melted ring, though he flinched away from it instinctively, expecting heat. But there was none left, and even the blisters and the blackening that the sundering of the bond had caused for them didn't hurt. Draco blinked at him.

"I'm going to write to Ian," Harry whispered. "I'd prefer to speak to him face-to-face, but I'll send an owl first, to explain why we're staying behind the wards."

Draco frowned at him, but waited. His gesture would seem to say one thing, Harry realized, but his words another.

"Then I need to have a face-to-face meeting with him," Harry said. "To explain that as much as I like him, it's not going to work out and he'll be better off picking someone else, because I can't imagine choosing anyone but you."

Draco being Draco, there was a flash and flush of triumph in his eyes before anything else, and then he leaned forwards and locked his lips on Harry's. Harry kissed him back, fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of Draco's neck, and they nearly knocked the tray of food to the floor as they writhed together.

Draco pulled back, smiled at him, and reached out to finger the edge of his shirt. "I think," he said casually, "that we're making our own choices at the minute, and not being pushed by the bond. Don't you?"

Harry blinked and nodded. He felt like that, especially since the bond seemed quiescent as long as they stayed close to each other.

Draco's smile turned slightly manic. "Then I think we've waited long enough," he said, and leaned close enough to kiss Harry again as he began to strip his shirt off.

Harry was suddenly breathless, hard, wanting, and so much in agreement that he could only kiss back, and grunt, and moan.

Well, and join Draco in stripping their clothes off.

It _had_ been a long time coming.


	40. Together

Harry had never wanted someone so much that his hands were shaking before. He reached out and rested them on Draco's arms, trying to feel the skin and the flesh beneath his fingers instead of mindlessly thinking about his own nervousness.

Draco helped with that. His teeth and tongue had descended on Harry's throat again, and he bit and licked until Harry cried out. Draco smiled at him and mouthed something Harry couldn't understand before he went right back to making Harry writhe and harden and feel as if he'd come in his pants.

That was the antidote to Harry's fear, in the end. He felt the pleasure pulsing through him from the points that Draco chose to touch or focus his attention, and he wanted Draco to feel the same pleasure. He reached down and pushed one hand beneath Draco's shirt, scratching lightly with his nails at the short hair he found there.

Draco gasped and ripped his mouth free. Harry grinned at him and pushed, and abruptly they fell from the couches to the floor. Draco spent a minute blinking, probably because he'd been under Harry when they fell and made the sharper transition.

Harry took advantage of his surprise to kiss him properly, looping his fingers through Draco's hair and hanging on against the force of anyone who might want to tear him away: Lucius, Draco, his own feelings. He tilted Draco's head to the side and licked at Draco's throat, because he thought he might as well see if _both_ of them had sensitive necks.

Draco cried out, then pulled Harry closer. He had his hands in hair, too, as Harry found when he tried to lift his head. He smiled and opened his mouth, running his tongue around in precise circles. He had already learned that Draco liked those better than licking in random patterns.

He was _learning._ He was learning Draco, teaching himself the language that Draco spoke and thought and moved in. Harry closed his eyes as much against the wonder as because it was hard to keep them open when he was rocking and rubbing against Draco's hip.

Draco whimpered beneath him. Was there any sound more delicious? Harry hadn't heard one. He pulled his head back so that could he nip down to Draco's shoulder, and pushed his shirt aside. Draco stirred uneasily, and Harry laughed into his skin, then whispered, "No, I'm not going to tear the shirt like the uncouth idiot you're afraid I am. I'm just going to pull...a little..."

And he did, and the shirt slid aside, revealing shining skin, brighter than ever with the flush of blood running just beneath the surface. Harry shot his tongue down and licked it, running in harder and harder circles, then using his teeth when Draco began writhing hard enough to push him off. Draco went limp at that, his mouth opening, his tongue dangling between his lips.

 _God._ "I want to know everything about you," Harry whispered, hardly realizing that he was speaking aloud. "I want to know...so much..." His hand came to rest on Draco's hip, and he pushed him flatter, spreading his legs, rubbing his cheek against Draco's groin. To feel someone else's erection was still a little strange, a little off-putting, but it was Draco, and that made it a lot different than some random stranger. _Or Ian._ It made this different from anything else in the world. Harry slid his hand down and gripped Draco's shaft, purely for the pleasure of watching him buck.

"I'll do this now," Harry said, and didn't know who he was talking to. Once again, it could have been himself, talking him past his fear of fucking this up. "Is that all right?"

Draco's eyes were brightly dilated as he looked up. He nodded. Harry smiled and kissed him on the thigh, then groped for his wand, still sitting in his robe sleeve, and cast the spell that would make Draco's clothing unravel, collecting in neat piles of thread on the carpet.

Harry only laughed when Draco glared silent outrage at him. "I said that I wouldn't _rip_ your shirt," he said. "Nothing else. And this wasn't your shirt." He bent down and took Draco's cock in his mouth before Draco could object, probably by scrambling away from Harry and trying to figure out some way to restore the cloth. 

He had deliberately kept himself from looking at Draco's cock for too long, because then he would start thinking that it was _huge,_ and he would panic, and he would end up embarrassing everyone involved, whereas if he sucked, then he would please at least two people. Draco promptly dropped back flat, ignoring the way that his head bounced off the carpet, and groaned. Harry smiled around the head, glad that he'd made the right decision, and got to work.

It really wasn't all that hard to work his tongues and lips and cheeks the way that he thought Draco would like, as long as he remembered to cover his teeth. They slipped through twice, and the slight flinches Draco couldn't control were much worse than the scoldings Harry had been half-braced for. He soothed Draco again, pouring in steady sucks he alternated with languid licks to make Draco feel so good that he would forget Harry had ever hurt him.

The taste was strong and salty, the smell pungent. Harry had to keep pulling back to breathe, and he had a brief flash of the expression someone else would wear if they walked into the room, including his friends or Lucius.

But it didn't matter, not beside the overwhelming need, desire, _want_ to give Draco pleasure. 

And it was working. Draco's face was shiny with his flush, with sweat, with the tears of strain and effort gathering at the corners of his eyes. He kept reaching out as if he'd like to get hold of Harry's head, but his hands always fell short. Harry licked around in a descending pattern and watched his eyes literally bulge; he pulled back to pay special attention to the head and watched Draco's throat bob; he went down as far as he could, sneezing at the tangle of Draco's pubic hair and watched Draco turn his head away, twitching as the emotions and the sensations played havoc with his body.

"You can let go," Harry found himself whispering, though since his mouth was full most of the time he doubted Draco could hear or understand him. "Just let go. You can, I promise, I won't be angry..."

Draco said something, but it was garbled and muffled in much the same way that Harry's words were. He drew back and pushed his tongue in another circle. It was getting harder to suck; his jaw ached, and he wanted to spit out some of the pungent taste. But he wanted more than anything else to watch Draco's head fall back and his mouth open and his eyes flutter shut...

At least, he thought that was the way it would happen. Instead, Draco arched up with a choked curse, and his hips hammered in a way that would have hurt Harry's face if he'd been stupid enough to keep it that close, and he began to come in a wave of wetness that soaked Harry's tongue and dripped down his chin.

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on sucking, making it as good as he could for Draco even in the midst of his orgasm. He coughed and choked, and he had to spit out a lot of it. He had the vague idea that was impolite, but his mind was full of the way Draco's mouth had opened as he cursed, and the soft noises Draco was still making, which sounded as if he didn't know he was making them. He was too busy thinking to swallow it all.

He ended up half-draped over Draco's body, panting, while Draco watched him with slitted eyes. He reached up and scraped the side of a finger over Harry's lips, pulling his hand back to stare at it in wonder.

"I didn't know that you would do something like that," he said quietly.

"I didn't know that I would, either," Harry said honestly. His voice was hoarse. He winced, a little, and tried his best to focus on Draco. "Do you mind that I couldn't swallow it all?"

Draco laughed. "Did it look as if I minded?" He drew Harry down to him, in a movement that would have gone faster if his muscles didn't look like they were limp with satiation, and kissed him. Harry kept his tongue back until Draco made an impatient noise, and Harry reckoned he didn't mind the taste. Draco reached for his own wand, which had fallen out of his sleeve when Harry unraveled his shirt, and cast a spell that mopped up the puddle of semen on the floor.

"You did a good job," Draco said. His fingers tightened on Harry's head for a second. "Unless you're going to tell me that you have a lot of practice...?"

Harry shook his head, mute at the fierce shine in Draco's eyes. Even if _he_ had practice, he thought he might have lied. The expression on Draco's face was, frankly, frightening.

"Good," Draco said, and rolled them over, so that he was kneeling on Harry's legs and chest as they lay on the floor. Harry swallowed, abruptly aware that Draco was naked and he was still clothed, although his chest and his cloak were covered with spatters of white. The advantage should have been to him, but he felt powerless, not powerful. Draco seemed to see or sense that, since his smile widened into a baring of teeth, and he reached down and brushed his fingers over the pulse that beat rapidly in the base of Harry's throat.

"I only wanted to make sure that I had your attention," he whispered. "I've felt--pressure to make sure that I had it, with Ian and the way that you talked about breaking the bond. I want you to look at _me,_ now, to only pay attention to me."

Harry shook his head, listening to the rustle of his hair against the carpet. "I don't know how you can have watched me suck you and think that I have attention for anyone _but_ you," he said hoarsely.

Draco cocked his head to the side. "That was a moment. An intense moment. I want to make sure that I have it for longer than that."

Harry grinned up at him. He could play these sorts of games with Draco, and it was okay, it really was. He no longer had to fear that he was going to say something stupid that would set back their bond by days or weeks and make it impossible for them to trust each other. They'd _both_ made the choice to be together, not just him. "Then show me why I should," he said, and lifted one leg so that Draco had no choice but to feel his erection from a new angle. "Prove it to me."

*

The permission burned away barriers that Draco hadn't realized were still standing in him.

_That's what I was waiting for._

He casually ripped Harry's robes off, followed by his shirt. He could get another set, couldn't he? He could bloody well do it if he'd disposed of Draco's clothes in that cavalier manner.

Harry's bare chest had more scars than Draco had expected. He traced the long, silvery lines of what looked like cutting spells gone awry, one set of jagged marks that had come from claws, and the odd half-moon indentations of teeth. He shook his head. "Sometimes I think that it's a miracle you survived to come to me."

"You think that I've survived just to be here?" Harry was watching him with glinting eyes, his hands curved as though he was going to make clawmarks of his own on Draco's chest. "You think that I only exist for you? What right do you have to get jealous of lovers who came _before_ you?"

"Because you would feel the same way about me," Draco said, and bent down so that he could mark Harry's shoulder with his teeth. "Because you're never going to leave me," he added next, "and I have the rights and privileges of being the only lover you'll ever need again."

Harry stared at him with flat eyes; the flatness couldn't hide the passion burning there. Draco smiled and moved away, tracing every scar with his tongue, his fingers, or his teeth. He wanted Harry to feel his saliva on them, the heat of his mouth, the smooth edges of his nails, more than he felt the sensations of whatever had created them in the first place.

Draco was here now. Harry wasn't going to run away from him, wasn't going to rise up and leave him behind, wasn't going to decide that this was all a mistake and he would wake up tomorrow as if from a bad dream.

Harry had managed to imprint himself on Draco's memory with his first blowjob. Draco wasn't going to settle for anything less.

Harry turned out to be sensitive on several of the scars. Draco took advantage of that, pinning Harry's hips down with one hand and holding him there as he fed and fed and fed on the striated skin, until Harry was gasping and whimpering and pulling at his hair. "Don't, don't, please, you'll make me come," he was whispering when Draco deigned to pay attention.

"And that's a bad thing?" Draco licked the scar end to end, closing his eyes so that the taste of the skin could fill his mouth, so that he could listen to the helpless way that Harry shifted and the moans that worked their way into his ears. "You made me come."

"I wanted to," Harry said.

Draco laughed, and he didn't care if the sound had darkness at the back of it. "But it's not okay for me to want to make _you_ come?" He fastened his mouth down, and sucked and sucked, and Harry's cry had pain in it. Draco sucked one more time and then reached down so that he could let his fingers hover above Harry's cock. It was flushed a dark red, and Draco hadn't touched it yet. He'd made Harry like this without touching it. He wanted to remember that, and to ensure that Harry remembered it. "What is this but _another_ instance of you refusing the gifts that we want to offer you? Our food isn't good enough, our hospitality isn't good enough, my mouth isn't good enough to swallow you. Well, I'm going to make you see that at least some of the things I can do are good enough to make you come."

He picked another scar that he'd seen Harry flinch at when he traced it, and ran his fingers down the skin above and below it. He looked up to find Harry staring at him with an expression of fascination, and bliss, and trembling hope, as though he wanted Draco to touch it but didn't know why.

"You're going to come now," Draco said.

Harry's eyes flashed. His hand rose and closed on Draco's wrist, and he was the one who moved Draco's fingers towards the scar.

Draco smiled, drunk on pleasure that was almost more intense than his own orgasm, and flicked the scar, turning his fingers so that his nails rested directly on it.

Harry cried out. The sound was harsh and came from the back of his throat, and it went on, ripping and tearing through various barriers on the way out. Draco sat back and watched Harry come, the arch of the liquid as it left his body, the wringing shudders that traveled up and down his spine and centered in his groin, the uncoordinated way his hips jerked up.

Watched it, and savored it. All of this was his now. All of it.

When he pulled back at last, Harry was breathing as though he'd run two miles. He reached up and entwined his fingers with Draco's, but didn't say anything. Draco kissed his hand, and wondered if Harry would think him impatient if he shifted forwards and showed Harry that he was hard again.

What could he say? Weeks of wanting, amplified by the bond and the frustration of having to put _off_ what he wanted, meant that just one satisfaction of his desire wasn't going to be enough.

Harry had either felt Draco's shaft between his legs or sensed what he wanted. With a lazy smile, he reached down and ran his fingers along Draco's cock. Draco hissed, but shook his head.

"I've had your mouth," he said. "I want something more than your hand, now."

Harry rolled back over to stare at him as he said that, eyes wide. Draco bent down and kissed him, gently, insistently.

"If--if you want to fuck me, then we're going to need a bed," Harry said at last, his voice thick. "I don't think that I want to do something like that for the first time on a floor. It's fine for sucking, of course, but I think I'd get a backache, and that means I could be--"

Amused with his babbling, Draco trailed his fingers across Harry's mouth, effectively shutting him up. "No," he said softly, when he was sure that Harry was paying attention. "That's not what I meant. Not yet, at least. It would take too long, anyway, and I want you in the proper frame of mind when I fuck you. Will you roll over and let me--?" He trailed his fingers gently up and down between the cheeks of Harry's arse this time.

Harry got it without Draco having to explain further, luckily. He flushed, but rolled over on his stomach and spread his legs. Draco hummed and settled down, sliding his cock gently between Harry's cheeks but not inside. "Everything we've done," he murmured, "and _this_ is what you get embarrassed about?"

"I just, I don't know," Harry said, and buried his face in the floor so that Draco had to lean closer to hear what he was talking about. Not that that was really a problem, not when he found even the back of Harry's neck interesting and even the sides of his face interesting to watch as they worked their way through various shades of red. "I reckon I thought more about giving people blowjobs and handjobs than letting them use my arse, you know?"

Draco had to close his eyes so he wouldn't spill all over Harry's back from the jolt of heat that ran through him. "I think," he said in a low voice, prying the cheeks of Harry's arse open further, "that you don't need to worry about anyone but me doing that. Ever again," he added, and settled further in, letting sweat and the come that still clung to his cock ease the way.

Harry did nothing but lower his face into the carpet and answer with a low moan. Draco stroked his flank, his side, and his back, trying to soothe him and put off the moment when he had to move.

But it came, and he began to rock back and forth, listening to Harry's breathing under him, listening to the slight squeaky sound their skin made as they moved together. Because they were moving together, even like this, when Harry was tired; he shifted up to meet Draco, he shifted his hips against the floor, he shifted the scale of his moans up and down as though someone was using them to tune instruments by. Draco kissed the nape of his neck and stepped up his pace.

Harry gave a broken sound and tried to heave himself up. Draco tensed his legs, prepared to rise if that was what Harry needed, but then he realized that Harry had only needed a hand beneath him for the obvious reason.

Draco used the back of Harry's neck to hide both his smile and his laughter. "Well, well," he whispered. "So I'm not the only one who got hard again faster than I should have, hmmm?"

"It's never been this way," Harry said, whispering back so fast that Draco thought he was eager to hurry the sounds out of his throat before they could embarrass him further. "I don't--I don't understand. How do you get me _hard_ like this? It should be impossible. It's because it's _you_ \--"

Draco pushed Harry flat after that, trapping his hand beneath both of them, and began to rock more urgently. Harry was rubbing himself at the same pace, his head bowed and his breath rushing to the point where some concern added itself to Draco's desire to finish.

It was all heat and motion and the tightness as Harry's arse clasped him and the inevitable rising, the flaring coil in his belly and the way his muscles tightened and the breathless gasp of Harry's laugh beneath him as he climaxed--

The pleasure hit Draco over the side of the head, and he fell after Harry into the abyss, fell after Harry into the warmth and the tide of their expectations for each other, fell after Harry because they were connected now, and always would be.

Draco didn't think they could let each other go.

*

The first thing Harry became aware of was that Draco's weight was pinning him down, and that his hand hurt like _fire,_ trapped at the wrist as it was, still clutching his cock and covered with drying wetness. He moaned and rolled over, dropping Draco to an undignified position on the floor.

Draco grunted and hung onto him, but at least Harry could pull his trapped hand free and shake it. He stared dazedly down at himself, at the drying spunk and the way his stomach, covered with it, heaved up and down.

It had never been like that.

He doubted it could ever be like that, with anyone else.

That made him smile faintly for a second. If that was an argument for staying with Draco, it wasn't one that Harry would let carry much weight with him.

On the other hand, he suspected he knew what Draco would say to that: that he was the only one Draco would sleep with ever again, so it had _better_ be good.

"You're all right."

Draco's hand was on his shoulder, pulling him around to meet his eyes. Harry went with the pull, but caught Draco's hands when he was fully on his back and shook them gently back and forth.

"I'm fine," he said. "But I think you're going to _kill_ me with the way that you fuck. I'll expire after having my fifth orgasm in one night or something."

Draco's eyes absolutely _shone_ , and he still had the strength for a kiss that made Harry gasp as he drove Harry straight down into the carpet. Harry tried to writhe and come back up in another direction, but Draco pinned him down and kissed and kissed and kissed, and at last Harry went limp in self-defense and the interests of being able to breathe. Draco stopped the kiss at last, with a huff of breath that made Harry snicker, and propped himself up on an elbow above Harry, looking down with an expression that made Harry roll his eyes.

"Self-satisfied," he muttered.

"Yes, I know," Draco said. "As long as I can keep _you_ satisfied, then I will be."

Harry smiled and laid his head back, closing his eyes.

They still had so many problems. Ian. The press. The decay wizards. Laura. What they would do if their bond really did tie them to living together in the same room...

But right now, he could feel that the love they shared was worth it, since it was a consequence of all those problems.


	41. Shared Lives

"Good morning. I wondered if you would sleep it away."

Draco started, and opened his eyes. He was in his own bed, the way he had known that he would be; he and Harry had made their way to his bedroom when they were done eating. He didn't remember falling asleep, though. That was usually Harry's province. He rolled over and stared at Harry, who sat beside the bed with wet hair and a towel wrapped around his waist, busily scratching away at a piece of parchment spread over the table next to the bed.

Draco took a moment to simply admire the sheer beauty of Harry's body. His hair shone darker than ever with the water, and his scars looked like strange medals implanted directly into his chest. When he shifted, Draco could make out the twisting grey mass of the scars from the beast on his shoulders, but they didn't strike him as ugly, the way they had such a short time ago. Maybe because Harry had opened to him so fully during their bout of fucking that Draco had ceased to notice them.

"I still want you to get rid of those," he murmured.

Harry started in turn this time and looked up. "What?" Then he followed Draco's gaze and caught sight of the trailing gray thing on the edge of his shoulder. He gave a dismissive grunt and returned to his letter. "Yeah, I'd like to, too. But we have other things that we should do first."

Draco reached out and rested a hand on the edge of the towel. "Yes, we do," he whispered.

Harry's eyes focused on him, and widened. Draco watched the pupils dilating for a long moment before he tugged on the towel and pulled Harry towards him. Harry moaned softly, and Draco knew before he touched him that he'd hardened.

"Draco," Harry said breathlessly, as Draco gripped his shoulders and leaned in for a kiss. "We really--I have to finish this letter to Ian, and then we have to do something _other_ than fuck. Please. I--"

Draco bit his neck, and pulled the towel away completely. "I want your mouth again," he whispered, pressing Harry's head down towards his groin.

Harry wavered one more time, but Draco whispered, "This is the way that married people do it," and Harry opened his mouth and gave in with a long, slow sigh that deepened as he started sucking.

Draco closed his eyes and spread his arms. He could get used to this, and he thought he'd have the time to--

Then thoughts of the future dissolved into the pleasure of the present, and Draco arched his back and ceased to think.

*

"Still writing?"

Harry rolled his eyes and leaned up to kiss Draco. He'd gone for a shower when they were done--Harry still shivered at the memory of the events that had led up to that "done"--and Harry had resumed his letter to Ian. Draco's hand wandered down as if he would take the parchment away, or perhaps dip into Harry's pants; Harry slapped his wrist smartly and ducked back.

" _Stop_ that," he said sharply. "We have to eat sometime, or we'll faint and have no strength left for fucking. Not to mention the research."

"I don't see any food here," Draco said, looking around as though he expected the house-elves to have left trays in the corners against the walls. 

"I wanted to wait until you got here," Harry said. "Narcissa told me about your strange breakfasts. God forbid that I order something normal." He nodded as Juli appeared, right on schedule, and said, "Yes, I'd like toast, pumpkin juice, and cornflakes. With milk to go with them, of course." He eyed Draco sideways.

"Honestly, anyone would think that you were still at Hogwarts." Draco let himself sprawl bonelessly on his bed, reaching out so that he could rest casual fingers on Harry's arse. Harry remembered what they'd done yesterday and found himself flushing. Draco smirked at him and kept his hand in place. Harry ducked his head behind his letter and told himself that Juli had probably seen worse, especially if she'd served the Malfoys for a long time. " _I_ want grilled chicken, berries, and a cup of hot tea."

Harry rolled his eyes as Juli disappeared. "Why are you so strange? From what your mother told me, it's not as though you need a lot of energy in the mornings most of the time."

"There are always those mornings I go into the office." Draco rolled up and tugged on the letter again, apparently to see if Harry would part with it. Harry retained it and stared at him. Draco smirked and rolled down again, humming under his breath. His fingers had started to caress Harry's skin, one stroking towards his entrance. Harry rolled his eyes again.

"Is sex all you can think about?" he asked, reaching back to take Draco's wrist and lift his hand out of the danger zone.

"I want you," Draco said.

Harry licked his lips. It was intoxicating, the way Draco watched him. He had once thought he would never like that kind of intense attention paid to him, if only because it reminded him too much of all the people who adored him for nothing more than dying. But from someone he wanted, who wanted him, who he'd struggled with and fought with and beside...

"Come back to bed," Draco said in a lulling voice, and tugged on the letter again.

Harry sighed as the parchment crinkled. "I want to," he said honestly. "But I really do think I owe Ian more than just an owl telling him that I'm sorry. He'll have to see me to understand all the complexities."

Draco scowled and tossed his fringe out of his eyes. "I don't want him coming behind the wards. I don't trust him."

"Then we'll meet him in a neutral place," Harry said. The mere thought of leaving Draco behind made his stomach bubble in panic. He put the letter aside as Juli and the tray of food came back. "We _have_ to do something about this tied-together aspect of the bond."

"Do we?" Draco asked lazily, sprawling on his back and letting his legs fall open as if that would attract Harry's notice. It did, of course. Harry looked away, flushing, and heard Draco chuckle quietly. "I wasn't aware that it was going to be an inconvenience for the next few days, at least. Most people would expect us to remain quietly at home after an assassination attempt on you."

"But we do have to meet Ian," Harry pointed out patiently. "That means that we have to figure out what to say."

"And for that, we'll have to wait and hear what my mother's discovered." Draco's hand crept up dangerously near the scars. Harry flushed harder when he remembered that he hadn't cared about the scars at all yesterday, about whether Draco touched them or not, but today wasn't yesterday. He hunched forwards, and Draco smiled at him and stopped moving his hand. "I don't know yet if it's dangerous for us to be in public. How much of this will be visible to someone else? How much can we pass off as the ordinary closeness of a married couple concerned for each other's lives?"

"Not much, if we meet someone who's seen the way we acted before Lucius tried to dissolve it," Harry pointed out. "Ian, for example."

Draco abruptly heaved himself up to a kneeling position on the bed, so that his lips hovered less than an inch away from Harry's. Startled, Harry fell silent. Draco reached down and hooked his fingers in Harry's shirt, tugging almost viciously.

"I hate it when you say his name," Draco breathed. "I want to talk about something else."

Harry tensed his muscles. He didn't like being that close to anyone, sometimes--

No, in the last three months. And Draco was different, and so were the bond and the choices that connected them. Although it made his muscles tighten and strain to the snapping point, Harry managed to stay close. He leaned his head on Draco's shoulder, and Draco lowered his head until his chin rested on Harry's. The tension had blown out in both of them like a candle.

"Sorry," Harry mumbled. "But I do think it's important. Besides, the sooner I talk to him, the sooner you don't have to hear his name again."

Draco's fingers were caressing the nape of his neck, tangling with the curls of hair there. Harry reached up a hesitant hand to mimic the gesture, and Draco made an encouraging sound and turned his head so that he breathed out against Harry's neck.

"Why do you act as if I'll hate you for touching me back?" he murmured, his chin digging in more firmly. "I _want_ you. You have to know how much, by now, or at least have a good idea."

"It's--it's partially the darkness, and the beast," Harry said, forcing his way through more of the same barriers that their lovemaking session had broken. Draco had been on top of him, riding his arse, had made him forget about his scars. That had to count for something. "I didn't want anyone to touch me when I thought I might hurt them, and I didn't want to get so caught up in passion that I forgot myself and relaxed my control over the beast in the scars."

Draco nodded, a movement that Harry felt as bony and rasping, thanks to the position of his head. "And what are the other parts?" His hands were firm cups, one on Harry's shoulders, one on his arse. Harry rolled his eyes in annoyance, but he knew what Draco would say if he could see the gesture. _You don't want me touching your back, where else am I supposed to hold on?_ And he would say it with an infuriating flutter of his eyelashes and a bright, simpering smile, too.

"That I didn't trust you at first," Harry said. "When that started changing, I didn't--" He hesitated, and tangled his tongue around a tooth. His mouth felt fuzzy, probably because he'd gone straight from kisses to eating, and then back to kisses. Should he go brush his teeth?

 _You're avoiding the subject._ Draco didn't say it aloud, but he didn't need to, not with the way that his hands had tightened around Harry. 

"I don't--it's not casual for me," Harry said, and his face was burning so badly that he was grateful Draco wasn't looking directly at him. "It's _hard_ for me to think anything about touching is casual, okay? When Hermione used to hug me, or Mrs. Weasley, it was something I always remembered. It was so _rare._ And that means that I have to have some kind of emotional relationship with someone before I fuck them. I wasn't sure that my relationship with you was emotional enough, or deep enough, or likely to last."

_And now that I've said that, can we discuss Quidditch or something so I can stop feeling like an idiot?_

Draco evidently didn't agree that he'd sounded like an idiot, or that he was unmanly. He tightened his fingers and murmured, "And why were hugs rare enough for you to remember each individual one, Harry?"

 _Shit._ He'd been watching his back for the moment when Narcissa decided to pursue talk of the Dursleys, and he'd totally forgotten that Draco might someday know him well enough to ask the same thing.

But he'd started this. And Draco's body, warm and tight against his, just meant that he had more of a right to ask the question. Harry closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and forced himself through the confession that he'd never intended to make, even when he realized how much he trusted the Malfoys. It wasn't really a matter of trust, or he would have told Ron and Hermione all the details, in order, a long time ago. It just--he didn't talk about it, and they already knew everything important. That was all.

"My relatives," he said. "They weren't that thrilled about having a wizard in the house."

Draco didn't say anything. His fingers lightly caressed Harry's shoulders and arse, and Harry gradually relaxed. The waiting silence was its own temptation to talk, he thought. Draco wasn't exploding in righteous rage the way he imagined Narcissa might have done, and that meant he could keep going. There weren't going to be consequences for the Dursleys from this. Probably. If he could keep his tone middle-of-the-road and reasonable, if he could tell Draco what had happened without getting hysterical about it.

_The fact that you kept it secret so long is going to work against you there, though. He's going to think it's something a lot more dramatic than it really is._

Harry grimaced in acknowledgment and continued. "My mother's sister--my aunt, who took me in behind blood wards--she always wanted to be a witch. She was jealous that my mum was and she wasn't, and she turned away from her. I think that hurt both of them," he added. Now that he had time and distance, he could see Aunt Petunia more clearly. 

Draco said nothing, but his hands grew a little tighter. Harry had no idea why, so he continued. "She married the most Muggle man she could find, and they had the most normal lives they could imagine. Then I arrived. That broke everything up. I mean, my uncle knew about magic before that, but he'd always thought it would have nothing to do with him and my aunt. So they took me in, but they weren't happy about it. I--did a lot of chores."

"Harry."

That voice came from someone he could trust utterly. He knew it. Harry dug down and found both of them waiting, the courage and the truth.

"They didn't like me. They didn't want me. I didn't know about magic until I came to Hogwarts, because--they told me that my parents died normally. Nothing about murder or curses or evil wizards. They told me my parents were drunks." He was whispering feverishly now, the words pouring out of him like pus from a wound. He hadn't realized how good it would feel to get this out, to clear it out. "They told me that I was a freak, because sometimes magic happened, but I didn't know that's what it _was._ They didn't like the word. I did a lot of chores."

Draco's hands tightened on him. Harry didn't think he was angry, or at least, he could trust it wasn't anger at him.

"They didn't always give me food," Harry said. "I slept in a cupboard for--a long time. Until the Hogwarts letter came. Then they got upset because they thought someone might be watching, and moved me up to my cousin's second bedroom."

Draco's chin came to rest on his shoulder. His hands clamped down. Harry leaned closer to him and sighed, for once welcoming the embrace, the tightness of it. He wasn't being caged, wasn't being held captive. This was someone who would never let him go, but for different reasons.

He could learn to trust it fully, in time.

*

Draco knew he had to keep his rage where it belonged. He wanted to shout and storm around the room and kick things, but not only was that undignified; it would cause his mother to raise an eyebrow at him, and Draco didn't think he could deal with that.

And it wouldn't help Harry, which was the most important thing right now.

He waited until he thought that his face could express some emotion other than anger, and then drew back and smiled temperately at Harry. He raised an eyebrow back, obviously not believing it, and his fingers twined hesitantly in Draco's shirt.

"It sounds bad," he said. "It sounds worse than I knew, saying it all aloud like that." His face was pensive, and he stared over Draco's shoulder at the far wall. Draco waited until he looked back of his own free will, because as angry as he was, nothing would matter if he compelled Harry right now. He would pull back, and Draco would lose this fragile, shimmering trust between them. 

"I don't want you to make excuses for them," Draco said. He had barely known that Harry's Muggle relatives existed a day ago, barely begun to speculate that they might have something to do with the way Harry behaved. Now he _knew_ , and he wanted to--

That was the problem. There was a lot he could do to them, but the spells crowded each other out on his tongue and in his mind, as he kept trying to come up with something as bad as what Harry had suffered. And there was so little he could do that Harry would _permit._

"No," Harry said. "But I want you to know something."

Draco leaned forwards, his forehead hovering in front of Harry's, his eyes nearly as close. Harry tried to pull away to look at him more fully, but Draco held him where he was and shook his head. Not yet, not this way. "I'll be honored to hear whatever you want to tell me," he whispered.

"Right," Harry said, with a slight, odd tone in the back of his voice, not as if disbelieved Draco, but as if he'd never heard someone say that before. "They didn't beat me, Draco. My cousin--chased me sometimes, but my uncle didn't beat me. Didn't whip me. Didn't rape me." He paused, chewing on something invisible and probably indefinable. Draco waited, one hand still on his shoulder, for Harry to spit out the words he needed. "Didn't do half the things that you're probably imagining right now. I've told you what they did."

"I'm relieved," Draco said simply. He was glad that there was that much Harry had been spared from. "But if you were trying to make me hate them less, then you failed."

Harry gave him a fleeting smile. "Not that," he said. _Yes, that,_ Draco said back silently, watching the way Harry's eyes darted away from him again and settled on his hands that were writhing back and forth, trapped between their bodies. "It's not--I've told you what they did. That's bad enough. Please don't go looking for more reasons."

Draco waited, until he thought the furious burst of heat he'd wanted to respond with was fully under control, and then nodded. "I believe you," he told Harry.

"You do?" Harry's voice was unsure, and he peered at Draco and then away again. 

"Yes," Draco said. "But what you haven't thought about is the consequences of this. Is that the reason you've eaten so few meals with us? Because you're used to people taking control of your food away from you, and you want to make sure that it never happens again?" There. He was proud of himself for the steely control with which he'd said the words. It meant that he hadn't screamed, hadn't said half the torrent of abuse that he wanted to pour forth against Harry's relatives.

_His relatives. They don't deserve to share the same flesh and blood he has._

"I don't know."

Harry's voice was clipped. Draco smiled at him and put an easy hand on the back of his neck when he seemed as if he would move away.

"You don't need to be ashamed of what they did to you," he whispered. "And if you don't know the consequences, well, that's fine. Why would you have wanted to think about what they did to you?"

"I don't trust you when you get that calm," Harry said, his shoulders tensed as if he believed that Draco would try to seize him and shake all the secrets of his relatives' location and names out of him.

"I wish you had thought about it," Draco said, deciding that anything was better than lying in this moment. "I think it would have helped you to come to terms with your pain and you would have realized that it's not _your_ fault, what they did. It's all theirs."

"I don't see the point of," Harry said, and bit his lip, breathing in a way that Draco knew was meant to calm _his_ anger. Draco waited him out, his eyes fastened on Harry's face.

"I don't see the point of assigning blame," Harry continued at last. "I know that it's other people's favorite game. Hell, it used to be one of mine. I would hear about someone breaking a rule or stealing something, and I thought it _had_ to be Snape or one of you lot." Draco smiled, and continued to maintain his steady closeness. "But I grew up. And if I'd spent too much time thinking about whose fault it was when I was in the darkness with the beast, then I doubt I would have lived. I had to think about survival there, not the decay wizards."

"But you're free now," Draco said. "Do you want to see the decay wizards go unpunished?"

Harry sighed and shifted in a complicated pattern. "No," he said. "But I want it to be justice, not revenge. I want to see them locked up and all the conspirators captured and their draining of beasts and other people stopped. I don't think they should suffer for the rest of their lives _just_ because of what they did to me."

"And I want to see your relatives brought to justice because that's what should happen," Draco said promptly. "Not because I want them to understand what they did to you and scream themselves to death in despair." _Although that's what I would like to happen. Although that's what will happen, once I tell my mother._

Harry eyed him meditatively. Then he said, "I'll think about it," and moved firmly backwards despite all Draco could do to keep him close.

"Do you distrust me?" Draco asked. He stretched out along the bed and watched the edge of the grey scar he could see poking out from beneath the collar of Harry's shirt. Harry hadn't immediately replaced the glamours that he'd been using to hide the scars lately, which did say something profound about his trust, though for Draco's money nothing could match what Harry had allowed him to do yesterday, touching him without a thought for what he would say because of their ugliness. "I hadn't thought that was the case."

Harry looked as if he were grinding his teeth into his tongue. Then he sighed and shook his head. "That's not it," he said. "But they're my past. I would prefer to focus on the future." He turned around with a bright smile and looked at Draco, before Draco could make the argument that the past inevitably influenced the future, and talking about his relatives might help Harry explain some of the decisions he'd made and the actions he took. "And I would prefer to focus on _you_. You've heard everything I feel like telling for right now. What about you? What was it like to grow up in this place, with a father like yours? And a _mother_ like yours?"

About to answer bitingly, Draco caught Harry's eye and saw how much of that was the truth. Harry had a hunger for family that seemed to go almost unrecognized. Draco had thought most of it came from his parents' deaths, but it seemed now that as much might have coalesced because he had _never_ had the experience of belonging to people who wanted him.

So. His desire to know was sincere. And they would have the rest of their lives to explore what Harry had told him today. This was only the beginning.

Draco relaxed back against the pillows and began to speak, nothing loathe to talk about himself. "My father was the one who taught me about strength--brute force. He really wasn't all that subtle, never mind all the political contacts he had. My mother was the one who taught me how to take that strength and _use_ it, with grace..."


	42. Fowards Into the Circles of the World

"Thank you for coming."

Harry sounded sincere, as far as Draco could tell. He couldn't bring himself to be sincere if he spoke, so he nodded coolly, once, to Shelborn and then turned and stared at the entrance to the restaurant. He still hated being out here like this, out from behind the wards, with Harry vulnerable. 

_So perhaps he would hate me for thinking that,_ he had to admit, glancing at Harry and seeing the calm, determined expression on his face, the way his hand hovered an inch from his wand, how his eyes measured the confines of the room and looked as if they would figure out an escape in seconds if that was needed. _He's perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and he would hate to think that his confession to me about his relatives damaged him in my eyes._

But it wasn't exactly damage. Draco wondered if he could explain that. He didn't think Harry was weak, he simply...

Harry had had to deal with more than enough in his life, and was having to deal with more, given the scars and the decay wizards and this new permutation of the bond. If Draco could have spared him something, it would seem stupid and uncaring not to.

Accordingly, he had suggested that _he_ could meet Shelborn and explain the situation to him. The bloke was a pure-blood. Harry had chosen him for that reason. Surely he would understand.

He had proposed that, and Harry had stared at him. Then he'd turned back to the mirror and finished making ready, dashing his hair into a new position and adjusting the collar of his robes.

"You look like you're _primping_ for him," Draco had hissed, stepping up behind Harry and putting one hand on the back of his neck. It had become one of his favorite places to touch Harry, particularly because his hand wasn't resting on the scars if he did that. 

"I'm making sure that I cover up the marks of our time together, yes, so he won't feel that I'm throwing it in his face," Harry retorted, fixing Draco with a single freezing glance that Draco didn't feel he'd merited. "He deserves better than that."

As far as Draco was concerned, Shelborn deserved nothing but a brutal invitation to fuck off. Of course, Harry wouldn't see it that way. And Harry had asked, moments before they Flooed to this restaurant to meet Shelborn, wouldn't Draco want the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting if he was in Shelborn's position and "Ian" was in his?

Draco had waited a moment until Harry had to look at him instead of the Floo powder he held in one hand, then bent close and murmured, lips right at the edge of Harry's ear, " _I_ wouldn't accept it. I would find some way to get you back, to make you acknowledge me."

"Just as well for all of us that Ian's not like that, isn't it?" Harry retorted, and stepped into the fire. Draco followed, disgruntled.

He had to admit that he did feel less possessive of Harry than he had the last time they were at the Ministry--the effects of the iron band were finally fading, or at any rate getting themselves under control--but that hardly mattered. The sight of Shelborn's face, his earnest eyes (so painfully _earnest_ ; Draco would never look that way if someone he wanted was being taken away from him), the way his hands toyed with his fork, made Draco want to touch Harry's hand and caress his arm and kiss his neck just to fuck with Shelborn.

"I reckon it didn't work out exactly the way you thought it would," Shelborn said quietly, his eyes resting on their wedding rings for an instant and then darting away. Draco smirked and moved his hand forwards so that their iron bands locked. Harry shot him a look of intense irritation, but he didn't actually ask Draco to let him go, so Draco left his hand in place and just raised one eyebrow. If Harry wanted Draco to release him, he would have to ask himself.

"No, not at all." Harry reached out and clasped Shelborn's hand with his own.

Draco closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Harry was talking and so was Shelborn, a hum of voices and trading words, but Draco didn't want to listen. He listened to the sounds of the restaurant instead, the whispers and the clinks and the louder conversations and the occasional whoosh of the Floo as someone arrived the way he and Harry had, and told himself that he was listening for something that would potentially signal the arrival of the decay wizards. 

It was _irritating,_ that was what it was.

Harry was too good for his own good. He was compassionate, and he cared about hurting people, and he was less exclusive and less jealous than Draco was. Draco reckoned he should think of that as a good thing, and it was, especially in the abstract. After all, that meant Harry wouldn't get as upset about things like Draco talking to Laura when he decided what to do about that.

But he wanted Harry to be jealous for extended periods of time, over him, far more than he wanted single moments when Harry was understanding and generous.

Then Draco thought of something, and his mouth curved in a hard smile. _Well. I haven't been close to Laura except once, when we met up in the room where Grayson attacked Harry, since we came to a better understanding. Harry hasn't had his chance to be affected by the iron band yet._

He could feel someone staring at him in concern, and opened his eyes to see Harry watching him. He smiled and shook his head, then leaned back in his chair, more relaxed than he had been yet, though he made sure to keep his iron band linked with Harry's.

Things were changing, and they were improving, which wasn't always the same thing.

*

"I'm sorry," Harry said to Ian, rolling his eyes sideways at Draco. It was perfectly obvious that Draco wasn't listening, so Harry felt free to make gestures like that. Draco had either smirked at their rings or looked elsewhere, presumably to keep from glaring at Ian, the entire time they were in the restaurant. "He's like this."

"I can see why."

Harry felt his face practically burst into flames as Ian let his eyes ran over him. He still wasn't good at taking compliments, and for all he knew, he never would be. He ran his hand over his forehead and sighed. "Sorry. But no, I never planned for this to happen. I thought our marriage was on the verge of shattering just because we didn't trust each other when I spoke to you."

Ian sighed back and shrugged. They'd already done all the talking they could, maybe, Harry saw. At least he didn't see deep pain on Ian's face, although what he saw there was bad enough; Ian could probably get over this without permanent heartbreak. "What we think is going to happen and what does aren't the same," Ian said. "I'll not deny, though, that I was looking forward to getting to know you better."

Harry squeezed Ian's hand again. Draco also wasn't watching that, and if he had, then Harry would have defied him to his face over his right to get angry about it. "And I, you," he said quietly. "You're a different person than Draco. It would have been--nice."

"Yes, that and more," Ian said, and shot a sideways glance at Draco, his eyes sparking. Harry didn't know what he meant to do until Ian lifted Harry's free hand to his mouth and kissed it.

Draco turned his head and gave them both a blank stare. His muscles had tensed, and Harry could feel the motion of Draco's arm against his that meant he was sliding his wand out.

"Not _here_ ," Harry hissed, clamping his hand down on Draco's arm and refusing to let him move.

"He did that," Draco breathed, eyes very dark, "even after he knew that he couldn't date you anymore--"

"Yes, I did," Ian said, and rose to his feet, smiling at Draco with a sweetness Harry had to admire, if only because it didn't look overly fake. "Call it wanting one more taste."

He turned his back and made his way out of the restaurant. Draco stared after him, and his hand twitched towards his wand again. Harry rolled his eyes and forcibly restrained Draco. "Do I have to sit on you?" he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

"That was stupid," Draco said, and released his wand. Harry had no idea who he meant, or what action he meant, but was just as glad that Ian wouldn't receive a curse in the back as he walked away. Perhaps he should owl him and warn him about the possibility of it happening it years from now in the middle of a dark night as he walked down Diagon Alley--

Then he shut down that thought very firmly, because Draco would kill _both_ of them if he owled Ian again, and stood up with a shake of his head. "Anyway. We have what we came for."

"Perhaps you do." Draco stood, but his eyes hadn't moved from the door. "I could use a bit more reassurance."

Harry rolled his eyes again. "When we get home, then I'll give you all the reassurance you like."

Draco turned towards him, and his smile and his eyes had both become like polished steel. "Will you? That would be very...nice." His hands were busy under Harry's cloak, in places that would be less than obvious to most of the people watching them in the restaurant, but which still made Harry flush.

Somehow, they managed to get through the Floo without leaving any pieces of themselves behind in London. And somehow, they even made it to the bed before Draco was on him, biting his shoulder and pushing hard at his shirt, as if it existed mainly to make his access to Harry harder.

Harry had to start laughing when he realized how hard he was, though. _Bloody iron band. But I like it._

*

"If you come to the Ministry with Malfoy following you around like you've got him on a leash, then someone's going to notice, mate."

Harry sighed and swatted at Draco's hand, which was making its way up his thigh, out of sight of Ron's face hovering in the flames. "I know. But I don't know what else to do right now. Do you need me there to complete the investigation into the decay wizards? Or to ask questions or--provide evidence?" The Head Auror had hinted during their interrogation of Abernathy that they might need to examine the scars and perhaps even coax the beast to rise out of Harry. That made him want to vomit just thinking about it, but he would do it if he had to.

Ron's face softened, probably because he could see some of that same disgust in Harry's expression. "Not right now, mate. Everyone thinks it's natural that you'd want to take some time off after the way you almost died and the confrontations and attacks you had before that."

Harry nodded. He was glad. Narcissa hadn't come out of the Malfoy library yet, so they didn't know which conclusions she had reached, and venturing out to speak to Ian, although he hadn't mentioned it to Draco, had been harder than he realized. The bond seemed to leash them both tighter when they were in a public setting, as if it was the living creature Harry had compared it to and was panicking at the thought of their moving away from each other. "Thanks, Ron. Then I'll see you in a few days, when we've figured out what to do."

Ron nodded to him, mouth a thin line. "That's probably as long as we'll need to round up to the conspirators, anyway."

Harry smiled back at him, said good-bye, and let the fire go out. Then he turned to Draco and gripped his hair, shaking his head lightly back and forth. Draco, already kneeling on the floor in front of him, grinned up at him and reached out to brush his fingers over Harry's cock.

"You're _insatiable_ ," Harry said.

"Why shouldn't I be? You made me wait long enough." Draco breathed out, and although Harry was still dressed, the sensation was enough to make him close his eyes and shiver. "And we never did get a chance to be newlyweds, devouring each other, learning each other..." Draco's voice was soft, hypnotic, as he reached out and let his fingers hover above Harry's erection.

"Draco," Harry whispered.

Then the door to the sitting room they were using opened, and Narcissa stepped through.

Despite the way his own face immediately flushed and he brought his legs down to let one hand cover his groin, Harry couldn't help but grin. Draco had practically jackknifed to his feet and was now standing close to the fire, as if that would help explain the way sweat gleamed on his cheeks and blood underneath them. He cleared his throat loudly, too, and turned his body at an obviously unnatural angle. Harry resisted the temptation to turn him back again and focused on Narcissa. If she had finally sought them out after hours of research, it must be important.

"I'm afraid I found nothing that gives us a solid answer," Narcissa said at once, and if she was aware of what they had been doing, she gave off an air of sublime unconcern. "But what I do have is interesting. May I sit?"

Harry blinked when he realized she was looking at him, not Draco. She had never done that before, especially since this was _her_ house.

But as he watched her sit and arrange her robes primly around her, it occurred to him that she might have done it because she wanted him to feel at home here. It wouldn't be the first time she'd made a gesture like that, and this time, he could actually notice and appreciate them.

Draco eventually came back from the fire and settled down on the couch at Harry's side, although he conscientiously didn't touch him. Harry couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a gleam of amusement in Narcissa's eyes before she turned to the precisely inked sheaf of notes she held.

"Nothing precisely like this has happened before, no," she said, her voice soft. "But there have been rituals interrupted in the middle, rites of marriage itself, rather than a forced marriage bond. And I have been able to find a story of a couple with a steel band who found themselves still capable of affecting each other's lives when the forced marriage was ended."

"But the steel band didn't stay on their fingers?" Draco's voice was calm now, full of authority. Harry looked at him with admiration. He wouldn't have been able to do that. He was hard put to keep from squirming, in fact.

"No." Narcissa folded her hands on her lap and studied them both, eyes lingering on their wedding rings. "That is the difference between you and all the other mentions of this I can find, and I assume it must have happened because of the number of the bands. Perhaps their formation in a short time helped as well. Most couples remain forcibly married for years before acquiring the bands of extra metal, if they ever do."

"We always did have to be intense," Harry muttered, and had to resist the temptation to meet Draco's eyes. It would go nowhere good, right now. Perhaps the hardest thing to come to terms with now was the ability Draco had to affect him, how much he _responded_ to him, even though Harry didn't think he always showed it. "What were the consequences of interrupting a wedding rite?"

"Various." Narcissa consulted her notes again, though from the crisp way she spoke Harry thought she might be doing it for appearance's sake; she had probably memorized what she was going to say already. "In a few cases, the couple still felt connected to each other. In one case where the rite had advanced as far as the final vows before a witch who had been formerly betrothed to the wizard attacked, they were unable to touch others without pain until they were reunited and the vows completed."

"Is there anyone else who can't venture far away from each other?" Draco shifted his weight and leaned forwards. "That is the consequence I find most troubling, and which I think our enemies could use against us most easily."

Harry nodded, wincing as he thought of what would happen should the Ministry miss someone as they mopped up the decay wizards. They would probably try to capture Harry if not kill him, or perhaps capture Draco and use him as a means to force Harry to release the beast. Harry didn't know how the bond, coiled around them tighter than ever now that Narcissa was in the room and they were paying attention to someone besides each other, would react, but he flinched from the pain even in his imagination.

"There was one set." Narcissa frowned, and her fingers stilled. Harry winced. He had learned to read her well, well enough to guess what the kinds of words that would follow before she said them. "A couple interrupted in the middle of their rites due to familial disapproval, who died when their bond was stretched by well-meaning parents who thought they would be willing to marry others when separated."

"How--how far?" Draco's voice was thick. Harry reached out and let his fingers stroke Draco's wrist, feeling the pulse beat there.

Narcissa's eyes were dark with compassion. "One mile."

Draco closed his eyes. Harry squeezed his wrist hard and turned back to Narcissa. "Were you able to find anything about how to heal the consequences of a broken bond?"

"Death is the major consequence," Narcissa said. "I believe that what you need is a way to guarantee the continuation of life."

Surprisingly--since Harry thought Draco was the one less bothered than he was by confinement behind the wards--Draco was the one who shook his head and murmured, "But we can't stay behind the wards for the rest of our lives, or even for very long. What can we do to guard ourselves?"

"The couples who were interrupted in their wedding rituals, if they did not die, repaired the situations by completing the rite." Narcissa nodded at their rings. "I think you should marry again. That would renew the bands on the rings and give the bond a place to--settle, I believe is the right word. A place to live. It could then be assured that you had something more than your own wills tying you together, and so it would not see the need to compress the distance between you."

Harry reacted without thinking about it. Draco had given him so much in the past few days, including his tolerance of Ian and the way he had talked his way through Harry's confession about the Dursleys. He turned around, clasped Draco's hand and raised it to his lips, and waited until Draco locked eyes with him, frowning. Then he whispered, "Draco, will you marry me?"

Draco stared at him, lips parting slightly. Harry hoped it was in astonishment and not in disbelief; that would be a _little_ disheartening, to be disbelieved when he was trying so hard to give Draco this gift. He held Draco's eyes and waited.

Then Draco said, "Of course. But only as long as you marry me." His hands were holding Harry's tight enough that Harry could feel the bond between them again, humming in confusion. They weren't supposed to get _closer_ than they needed to, after all.

Harry laughed softly. "You didn't want me to propose without being able to do the same, hmmm?" He leaned in to nip softly at the side of Draco's mouth, and then Narcissa cleared her throat and he remembered they had company. He pulled away, coughing, only to see Narcissa shake her head at them with a slight smile.

"You need not stop on my account," she said. "But while I am cheered that you will have a _proper_ wedding, it must be the right kind. I have not yet encountered a book that would tell me how to repair a broken forced marriage bond where it was snapped in this half-state. There have been a few times that the head of the family withdrew his or her blessing from the marriage, with what result you know. But in those cases, the bond was gone completely. There was no remnant of it to be soothed."

"Wouldn't the snootiest possible pure-blood tradition satisfy it?" Harry asked. Then he realized the way Draco was glaring at him, probably less from what he had said than from the fact that he had said it to _Narcissa,_ and winced. "Er. Sorry."

"There are, in fact, several equally _refined_ pure-blood marriage rituals," Draco said, with a hauteur in his voice that Harry couldn't blame him for. "We will explore them, and will decide on the right one."

Harry glanced at Narcissa, to see if that would work, only to meet a smile that lit her eyes like a fire. He blushed for a different reason this time, and she stood to cross the room to them, taking his wrist and lightly kissing it.

"Welcome to the family, Harry," she murmured. "Hopefully you feel much more welcome now than you did. I swear to stand beside you, in protection and defense, in acceptance and compassion."

Sparks swirled into being around her fingers, bright golden reflections of what Harry assumed to be firelight at first. Then they swarmed down into his skin, and he yelped as he felt tiny burning pricks where they landed. "Narcissa, what--?"

"At least you no longer instinctively reach for my married name in times of danger," Narcissa murmured, eyes deep with amusement as she inclined her head. "It is a sign of my commitment to you as a son-in-law, one of the blessings that my family could bestow when someone married a daughter of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. That is all."

"I'm a daughter," Draco said. 

Narcissa smiled at him and moved away, saying as she left, "There are worse things to be." Harry caught a glimpse of the shadow on her face and suspected she was thinking of Lucius.

As the door fell shut behind her, Harry shook his head and turned to Draco. "You know," he said, "that I didn't propose just because I want to get rid of the broken bond. I _also_ want to see us married. I want to see what ridiculous robes you'll pick out and try to make me wear. I want to see the way your eyes shine when I hand you a healed ring." He broke off and coughed when he realized Draco was staring at him. "You know that, right?" he finished weakly.

*

_I know that now._

Draco hadn't realized that he was carrying a small frozen ball of worry in his stomach, but it dissolved now. He leaned forwards and kissed Harry's chin, then his cheeks, then his mouth.

"Thank you," he murmured. "I love you."

Harry's eyes shut, as if he couldn't bear the light shining from Draco's, and he whispered, as if helplessly, "I love you, too." His hands were tight in Draco's hair as he found it and hung on.

Draco closed his eyes, turned his head, and kissed Harry's palm. Then his throat. Then his shoulder.

And then they resumed what they'd been about to do before his mother interrupted them, which Draco thought entirely fair.


	43. Courting in Circles

"Mistress d'Alveda is wishing to be speaking to you, sir!"

Across the room, Harry's head came up from the book of wedding rites he was studying like a hawk focusing on a mouse. Draco tried not to let the automatic comparison his mind made disconcert him as he inclined his head and rose to his feet. "Very well, Eshi. If you would guide me to the fireplace, please?"

"Guide _us_ ," Harry said, but under his breath, so that it was quite possible the house-elf anxiously bobbing and nodding in front of Draco's chair didn't hear him. Draco gave him a warning look and a beckoning gesture anyway. Harry practically trod on his heels as they left the sitting room and made their way to the neutral--in tints and furniture and decorations--room where the fireplace for receiving guests in a state of uncertain alliance was. 

Draco had assumed he would be happy to have his jealousy over Shelborn reciprocated. But that was before he had felt the tight clutch of fingers that Harry put on his elbow, and felt the way Harry shook before he pressed his chest against Draco's back and followed literally in his footsteps. He ended up reaching back more than once so that he could reassure Harry with a touch before they entered the room.

Laura's head hovered in the flames, her face as calm and polite and secretly amused as ever. "I should offer congratulations," she said, before either of them could greet her. She inclined her head to Harry. "My felicitations for surviving yet _another_ spirited attempt to kill you."

"Thanks," Harry snapped out. He bit down on the end of the last word and edged around Draco so that Laura could make out the points where they touched. Laura's smile seemed to deepen, but she said nothing more to him, instead turning to Draco.

"And perhaps I should congratulate you on achieving the virtues of concentration," she told him. "I can think of no other reason for you not to contact me in this past week, other than because you wished to focus on your spouse."

Draco felt his face burn. Harry was leaning heavily on his shoulder, almost enough to knock him over, his hand turned so that Laura would be able to see the iron band on their rings but not make out that several of the other metals that should have been there were missing. He cleared his throat desperately and said, "Well, yes, I have been thinking about the matter of my marriage over the past week."

"Tell her," Harry said, his lips so close above Draco's skin that it probably looked like a kiss from Laura's perspective. Draco grimaced and moved a slight step away, only to have Harry yank him back. "Tell her, or I will."

 _And considerably less diplomatically than you would,_ was the silent threat behind those words. Draco cleared his throat again. "Harry and I have decided to--renew our bond," he said. "With a more carefully chosen ceremony, this time." Like Harry, he saw no reason to let Laura know that their bond and rings had changed as a result of his father's petty temper tantrum (although he was sure that she would keep their secret better than Shelborn would have).

"Is that so." Laura's voice was so calm, so clipped, so tame that it was impossible to tell what she felt. Draco had envied her that level of control over her emotions. Now it seemed threatening to him, providing a cold, smooth, flat surface that he was more likely to slide off.

_You've been spending too much time around Harry and the other Gryffindors who growl out their emotions at a drop of a hat._

Well, perhaps he had. That didn't change the way he was feeling now. Draco nodded to Laura and clamped down on some of the less diplomatic things he could have said. 

"It is," he said. "Did you firecall for a particular reason, or simply to renew our acquaintance? I _am_ sorry that a week interrupted it. A beautiful woman like you deserves kinder attentions than that."

Harry's hand ground down on his as if wanted to smash Draco's bones, but Draco didn't know whether it came from the word "kinder" or the compliment to Laura's appearance. He still said nothing. Draco felt the sharp prick of thorns against his throat, though, the way he had felt them once before, and suspected that Harry's wandless magic was stretching around him, hungrily and slowly waking up to a world where someone was threatening its owner. 

"I called because I think that I deserve a place in your plans," Laura said. "Having dedicated enough of my time and patience to you." She sounded brisk now. Draco had no idea if that came from not wanting to waste more "time and patience" on him, or because she had noticed the dangerous anger discharging from Harry. "Do you wish to create a contract with me where I would bear your children, or not? I can hardly believe that you wish to marry me, not with what you have just said."

"I don't want him sleeping with anyone else."

Draco winced. Trust Harry to be unsubtle. "This is one of the compromises that I told you about," he murmured to Harry, trying to keep the words low enough that Laura couldn't hear them, though by the way her expression was changing he thought it was too late. "If we marry, then we need to figure out a way to have children. Having someone on the side who can bear them is the best compromise I can think of."

"On the side is an insulting phrase," Laura said. "I would insist on a properly signed contract, and I would want to know, as I did when I thought we were courting towards a traditional marriage, exactly what my compensation would be. Number of children would also be a concern." She was looking at Harry with a sharply critical gaze now, Draco noticed. Because of his ignorance of pure-blood ways? Because she had assumed they would have discussed this already?

_No. She's thinking about what it would be like to sleep with him, if she bore his children._

Draco clamped down on the jealousy that flooded through him like bile, but it was surprisingly difficult. He didn't know why that _should_ be. After all, if he slept with Laura, then he should allow the same privileges to Harry, assuming that Laura was in favor of them and Harry also was.

But the mere _thought_ made his hands want to tighten and choke the life out of someone. Preferably Laura, but he would do the same to Harry if he was the one who made the suggestion first.

He looked up to find Harry watching him. Laura said nothing, but a faint, amused smile played along the sides of her lips. "It seems as though you can't agree with this, either," Harry told both of them at the same time, turning his head back and forth. "That bloody iron band."

Draco blew out through his lips. "You've said that you don't want to sleep with anyone other than me," he told Harry carefully, disliking that they had to discuss this in front of Laura, but also knowing that it would probably be useless to ask Harry to wait, when it concerned her. "Would you mind if I slept with Laura, then? If you don't want to have--"

"I would also mind you being unfaithful." Harry was smiling, which might have fooled someone who wasn't close enough to hear his teeth grinding or see his eyes. "I would mind it a _lot_."

"There seems a simple and obvious solution to this, and I cannot believe that no one has suggested it," Laura remarked to the room at large.

"What is that?" Draco turned towards her, and found that without thinking about it, he was also seeking to cover Harry from her sight. He shook his head in disgust and would have stepped backwards, except for Laura's smile and the way that Harry's hands closed like pincers on his shoulders. It seemed he _enjoyed_ having Draco there, for certain values of "enjoy."

"The conception of a child through an intermediary," Laura said, and her voice was still calm and her eyes shone and Draco wondered how he could ever have thought her like Harry. Well, perhaps she did have the same fire, but she controlled it far better than Harry did. "You collect your seed in a vessel that will preserve its potency." Draco felt his face flame, but Laura might have been discussing how she liked the house-elves to make her breakfast. No, on second thought, she would probably bring more passion to that. "Or you collect Potter's seed, if you wish to both have children--and as long as it is not more than the number we have agreed upon. There are Healers skilled in arranging the conceptions of witches who cannot conceive by their husbands or have difficulty carrying the child to term."

"That's _impossible,_ " Draco said, and then snapped his teeth down. He wanted to say it was impossible because then his parents would have had more children, but that was not the sort of personal information that he wanted to reveal in front of Laura unless he absolutely had to.

"No, it is quite possible," Laura said, staring at him. "Though I see why you would not have...kept up on developments such as this, when you believe that you need not pay attention to anything that does not involve your own marriages or your attempts to relax the constraints of those marriages." 

Draco flushed and shook his head, feeling unable to take up the conversation now. Surprisingly, it was Harry who did, clearing his throat and studying Laura as if she had gone from an enemy to an unexpected ally. 

"You're sure this would be safe for you?"

Laura laughed, and the sound of her amusement still did things to Draco's nerves, but now the kind of twanging attention that it implanted them with didn't feel nearly as good as it had. "I would _never_ do something that risked my own safety," Laura finished at last, shaking her head. "Never. I might wish for heirs of my own and the compensations that I am sure your family will provide me, but not enough to risk my life."

Harry nodded, worrying his lip between his teeth as if he was concerned despite the reassurance. "And the child?"

"I assure you, the child does not care how it was conceived."

Harry's flush seemed to go all the way to the bone, and he shook his head. "The--child would be loved?"

"By the ones who chose to conceive it, certainly," Laura said. "I do not think I could perform your role of a perfectly concerned and caring mother. From what I have read, you have rather exalted ideals in that area."

"What the papers say about me is never more than half true," Harry snapped, his body angling slightly backwards into Draco's for reassurance. Draco nuzzled at his shoulder and hoped that he was managing somewhere between a glare and a smile for Laura. He didn't want to antagonize her, not if she was actually willing to bear children for their marriage, but he also didn't like her upsetting Harry.

"I did not mean their ridiculous stories of how you have battled dragons and saved a hundred people with a single spell," Laura said. "I meant the interviews where you have talked about the family you wanted, and the photographs where you and Draco have looked at each other with light in your eyes." She paused, watching them. "Though for that last one, I could have supplied evidence out of my own observations."

Harry turned and stared at Draco. Draco reached up and cleared a lock of hair off his forehead, because he couldn't _not_.

"Yes," Laura said. "That is the one."

Draco coughed and turned back to her. "You would agree to a contract that has you bear our children, then, in place of a traditional pure-blood marriage?" he asked.

"This is much more like some traditional pure-blood marriages than you might think," Laura said, while Harry leaned against his shoulder, content and warm. "And yes, I will accept this." She paused for a moment, then snorted when Draco continued to stare at her. "You are not _such_ a prize that I am broken-hearted about not being able to marry you."

"He is a prize," Harry said, his voice soft and fervent, and his hand falling to intertwine his fingers with Draco's.

"He would be for you," Laura retorted smartly. "But I think you should consider how different your marriage looks from the outside. I am glad that you have found someone who makes you look like that, Draco, but I would never be able to give you that. And now that I know you desire it..." She shrugged. "I would prefer to get on with my life and work. I will contact you in two days' time to work out the details of the contract."

Her face vanished from the fire. Harry shook his head. "What a..." His voice trailed off.

"What?" Draco moved around in front of him, lifting Harry's face with his hands, hungry for those green eyes to focus on him instead of spending any thought on Laura.

"I was thinking any number of...words," Harry said, and then cleared his throat. "And then I realized that she behaves a lot like your mother. It's just that your mother cares about me, so I don't see the same side of her."

"She can't match my mother for beauty or for grace," Draco said, inexplicably stung that Harry had found someone outside the family who he thought had the same traits.

Harry snorted. He tried to cover it with a quick cough, but Draco knew him well enough by now to recognize the sound, never mind the pathetic attempt.

"What?" Draco demanded, moving a step closer and bracing his arms on Harry's shoulders so that it would be harder for Harry to look away from him or throw him off. 

"I was just thinking," Harry said, and choked. Draco waited until he could speak again, hoping that this would be worth the effort he was using to pry the answers out of Harry. "That it's a good thing you're not marrying a woman," Harry muttered. "Because anyone you could find you would compare to your mother, and that's...that's not a good thing."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "I love my mother."

"Of course you do," Harry said. "But I doubt that your bride would have appreciated being compared to her constantly. And I'm _not_ going to be your bride, by the way," he added suddenly. "Any ritual we find that seems like it might work to make the marriage bond settle will have to be adapted so that it sounds like two men are getting married."

"Even if the bond might not settle if we change the ritual?" Draco asked bitingly, and when Harry hesitated, he rolled his eyes and bore in. "This is ridiculous, Harry. Really. I don't consider you a woman, I know that I'm not marrying someone who can give me children in the same way a woman could--which is the entire point of our arrangement with Laura in the first place--and I'm not in love with my mum."

"You had to add the last bit last," Harry said, with a solemn nod. "I'm sure that you think that makes it sound more convincing."

"It was the last thing I thought of," Draco retorted. "Listen. Are we going to consider more marriage rituals or not?"

"Of course," Harry said, and then grinned at Draco and retreated back up the stairs to the room where they had been reading the books that covered different kinds of wedding rites. Draco followed him, eyes narrowed on his back.

Someday, he was going to _make_ Harry understand that family relationships between pure-bloods were perfectly normal, even if different from what he had envisioned. Someday, he was going to point out to Harry all the subtle ways that his treatment by those Muggles affected him.

But perhaps it should not be today. Not until he had thought of a way to phrase those retorts that would shut Harry up for a time.

*

"Harry. Please."

Harry leaned back in his bed--Draco's bed, really--and stared up at the envelope hovering in front of him. It was pale blue instead of the red of a Howler, but when he reached for it, a voice had spoken from it. The voice was Hermione's, and he hadn't expected that--anything about it, really, from whose voice it would be to the soft, broken tone the words were said in.

His first thought was that this could be a trick, because Hermione would never sound like that. But then he thought how long it had been since he last saw her, how much time he and Draco had spent lately sitting behind the wards and searching for a solution to the problem of the marriage bond, and he winced. His friends could be legitimately worried about him.

And it had been delivered by Hermione's owl, who spread its wings from the table at the side of the bed and hooted threateningly. Harry glanced at it, then touched his wand to the envelope and cast a spell that should make it repeat its message. He'd been too dazed the first time to really take it in.

The envelope made a sound like someone clearing a throat, then continued, "Harry, we'd like to see you. I know that Ron's talked to you about staying put in Malfoy Manor while the decay wizards are caught and their conspiracy investigated, but that was days ago."

Harry relaxed. Yes, it had been. And he didn't think Ron would talk about that conversation with anyone he didn't trust, even under torture.

"Harry. Please." The swallowing noise he had found it hardest to believe really came from Hermione. "We know that you're probably fine, but it wasn't so long ago that you hated this marriage and wanted out. Please." Then the voice fell silent, and the envelope continued hovering in the air for a moment before it fell to the bed.

Harry reached out and let his hand hover above it for a moment before he snatched it back. Draco was stirring, and Harry knew he'd probably have to explain what the message was and who it was from before Draco would believe that it wasn't an unacceptable risk and unacceptable intrusion behind their wards.

Draco listened to the explanation in silence, and then leaned over and kissed Harry thoroughly enough to make it feel as if he were washing Harry's mouth with his tongue. Harry was panting when he pulled back, trying to keep his eyes open and failing more often than he succeeded.

"We can arrange a meeting with them in the Manor if you want," Draco said quietly.

Harry blinked his eyes open and stared at him curiously. "I'd thought you would prefer to go out from behind the wards, so that they couldn't see our defenses." _He_ knew his friends would never betray them, but Draco didn't have that same instinctive confidence.

Draco sighed. "I would, but then my mother told us about a mile's separation being enough to kill us. I don't want to take the chance that someone could snatch one of us and Apparate us beyond that."

Harry smiled and sat up, putting his arms around Draco's shoulders. "You know that we'll need to venture out again, that we'll need to take the chance that it'll be safe at some point?"

"But not before we find the right wedding ritual," Draco muttered, burying his face in Harry's shoulder. 

It wasn't worth arguing about, especially not right now, when Draco had already given permission for a meeting that Harry hadn't thought he would. He compromised by releasing Draco and giving him a little shove in the direction of the bathroom. "Go take a shower and wake up," he murmured. "You're stumbling around in a daze right now."

Draco gave him a sharp smile. "That's what you think," he said, and shut the door behind him.

Harry turned back to the envelope and Hermione's owl. Draco had given him the freedom to choose the time of the meeting, he thought, and that meant it should be soon, to soothe his friends' anxieties as well as reassure them that he was all right and this had been a _discussion_ with Draco, not something where he pleaded for consideration and Draco held the prize above his head.

"I'm fine," he said softly, then realized he really ought to cast the recording spell before he gave his message. He used the same envelope, since he didn't want to go and find another one; the bond was already whining softly in his ears over the fact that he was separated from Draco by a single door. "I'm fine, Hermione. Thank you, though. I should have thought before about the fact that you've be worried. I'm sorry. You ought to know that Draco and I are engaged in a searching for a more ordinary wedding ritual right now, one that's going to bind us and get rid of this little problem between us that I'm sure Ron told you about." That was the most specific he was going to be, on the--slight--chance that this was someone imitating Hermione's voice instead of her. "In the meantime, you and Ron can come visit this afternoon at four if you want. It can be a little later if Ron needs more time to work." Hermione's hours were more irregular. "Floo to Malfoy Manor, and the wards will be down for you."

He realized, as he reattached the envelope to the leg of Hermione's owl and watched it wing away, that he'd had no problem assuming Narcissa would agree to that. She had said this was Harry's home, so he would treat it like one.

Besides, removing the wards on a single fireplace was probably less risky than removing the outside wards so that Ron and Hermione could Apparate in, which would have been Harry's first idea.

He eyed the bathroom door thoughtfully. Steam was billowing from under it, and the bond whined in his ear like an angry mosquito. If he went and joined Draco, then it would be satisfied, and Draco would be satisfied, and _he_ would be satisfied. In more than one way. He grinned and stood up.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door. Harry hastily reached for one of the innumerable robes that Draco had dangling in his closet just beyond the bed. The house-elves would simply have popped in, so this had to be Narcissa, and Harry didn't feel like appearing naked in front of her. No matter how understanding she was about what he and Draco had been up to in the sitting room yesterday.

But when he opened the door, it was to find Lucius standing there instead. Harry shook his wand into his hand and retreated a step, ready to slam the door shut and use his body as a barrier if he had to.

Lucius only cleared his throat, looking quieter than Harry had assumed he could. "Harry," he said. He grimaced, and seemed to clear an obstacle from his throat, this time, before he could go on. "Son-in-law. May I speak to you?"


	44. In a Straight Line

Harry stared at Lucius in silence for a long second, and then looked automatically over his shoulder, half-afraid that Draco would come out of the shower and catch him. For the moment, however, there was nothing but light and steam from under the shut door, and Harry was able to ignore the buzzing of the bond that echoed in his teeth and spine.

"It depends on what you want to talk about," he said, finally, bringing his gaze back to Lucius's face. He couldn't keep his hand from cramping on his wand, but Lucius seemed to notice that and dismiss it in the same instant. 

"I wish to talk to you about the marriage bond, and something you could do to make Draco happy." Lucius's gaze was heavy. "Can I come in?"

Harry shook his head immediately. These were still Draco's rooms, although they'd shared them more and more often lately, and he didn't think he had the power or the right to invite Lucius into them. He stepped out in the corridor instead and closed the door behind him. The bond promptly formed itself into an invisible rope around his waist and _yanked._ Harry tried hard to give no sign. The last thing he wanted was Lucius figuring out a way to use that against them.

"You have two minutes to convince me," he told Lucius. "And you're only getting that long because you used to be Draco's father."

Lucius leaned towards him like a vulture. Harry stared back. If this was all Lucius had in the way of intimidation tactics, then he needn't worry about anything the bastard could try.

"So insolent," Lucius murmured, in a way that sounded like he was dripping water from his mouth to the floor. "You have no idea what I'm going to say, and you've already disregarded it."

"There's a quarter of your time gone," Harry reminded him.

Lucius pulled himself back with a rattling breath, and for a moment one of his hands clenched as if he would grip Harry's neck and tug him backwards. Harry brought his wand up visibly, and Lucius let the breath out and shook his head, an expression of irritation on his face that almost made him look human again.

"You can get rid of this bond if you find a way to remove the rings from your fingers," Lucius said. "And that will free Draco to marry someone else, someone who can commit to him fully in the way that I know you never have. You still let your past history and your names stand between you. If you renounce him--"

Harry laughed. He couldn't help it. He sagged against the wall, giggling, while Lucius stared at him, and then looked over his head at the bedroom door as if he thought Draco had put Harry up to this.

"Why do you reject a solution so tailor-made for what you wanted?" Lucius asked in a low voice. "You were upset that I took you into our family by force, and rightfully so. You should be overjoyed at the thought of being a Potter again, and being able to have children who will continue the line."

"There are ways around that," Harry said. He didn't think he should tell Lucius the specifics of their bargain with Laura, especially when he wasn't sure that he understood it himself yet. "And in the meantime, what makes you think that my goals have stayed exactly the same? Draco told me that I thought too much like a pure-blood who valued nothing but family when I mourned the loss of my name. He was right. I've reconsidered it."

Lucius snarled in what looked like confusion. "If you marry him, you give up your name forever!"

"Only if we stay in the forced marriage bond," Harry said, and smiled at him when Lucius visibly bit down on the corner of his mouth to keep from asking for any more than that.

The bedroom door opened then, and Draco stepped out, cool and regal in a set of white morning robes. Harry thought he was the only one who saw the murderous flare, quickly checked, in his eyes when they rested on his father. He strolled forwards calmly enough to wrap his arm around Harry's shoulders, and leaned in for a leisurely snog.

Harry kissed him back, though he felt a bit bad that he hadn't brushed his teeth yet, the way Draco obviously had, and hadn't used a Breath-Freshening Charm either. Draco didn't seem to care. He drew out his moan more than usual, but otherwise it was an ordinary kiss, which meant that Harry's head was spinning when Draco pulled away and turned to face his father. His face looked like pounded iron. Lucius met it with much the same mask.

"Well, Lucius?" Draco asked. "What did you have to say to Harry that you could not say to both of us?" He pulled Harry a little closer, and Harry felt the happy hum of the bond, like a hive with dozens of bees coming and going. He leaned on Draco's shoulder and smiled at Lucius.

"I was attempting to convince him that he could have more of a life and security for his family name if he left you."

Harry blinked. He hadn't expected Lucius to be so blunt.

Draco gave Lucius an expression that was a mixture of a smile and a murderer's insane rictus. Harry blinked again. He wondered if he had been mistaken about who he would need to protect in this particular situation.

"Lucius," Draco whispered, "you will never convince him to leave me. I would go after him and seduce him back if you did. And his family name will be fully acknowledged in a combination with mine when we marry again."

Lucius fell back a step, and one hand reached for a flailing hold on the wall behind him. Of course, he dropped it in the next instant, probably because he realized how weak it made him look, but he still had his wide eyes fixed on his son.

Draco laughed slowly, deeply. "You didn't tell him?" he murmured to Harry. "The happy duty of telling him we're getting married falls to me?"

"Getting married," Lucius said, and looked back and forth between them, to the point that Harry didn't think he could have hidden his laughter if he had wanted to.

And he didn't really want to. The look on Lucius's face was too stunned, too new. He put up a hand as though to ward off the words and then leaned forwards and peered deeply into Draco's eyes. He looked like a Healer checking someone for the dilated pupils that were a mark of experimental potions use. Harry wrapped his arms around his belly and tried not to feel as though he were going to be sick with merriment.

"You are willing to do this," Lucius whispered. "To make a mockery of your family and your legacy, all because you find yourself in bed with this half-blood and enjoying it."

"If anyone lacks the right to talk about ruining a family and a legacy," Draco said, words so slow that they were building up and rolling before Harry really knew where they were going to go, "you are the one."

This made Lucius flush to the point that Harry would have thought he was in danger of a heart attack or a stroke if he'd met him in the course of an Auror case. "I am still your _father_ ," he said, voice cracking. "And you cannot make a marriage with my permission--"

"I cast you out of the family," Draco said. "And before that, the Wizengamot took away your power to act as the family's head. You _do_ seem to have a hard time coming to grips with those basic facts, Father, and I'm not sure why. You _know_ that this is reality and not a waking dream on your part, yes?"

"I can still forcibly marry you to someone else!"

Draco smiled, and Harry shivered. Even standing in the favorable shadow of that smile, he felt chilled. He stepped back a little and then pressed closer to Draco's side, not sure whether he wanted to get nearer or farther away. There were disadvantages to either one.

"You could try," Draco said quietly. "That much is true. But with the forced marriage bond still existing between us, only in a half-state, the results of such a move would be unpredictable, much as they were when you _tried_ to dissolve the bond holding us together but our metal bands preserved it. Would you want to risk killing your son, Lucius? Or killing Harry Potter? That crime, you would go to Azkaban for." He paused. "If you lived."

The threat was palpable, and Harry thought he saw Lucius's bluster deflating. He turned his head away and closed his eyes. Finally, Harry thought, he was learning to see the real world as almost everyone else around them did. It was a world where he was stripped of power and influence, and he thought that was so horrible that he was willing to alienate Draco and Narcissa over it and behave like an idiot.

_That's what all this was about. An attempt to make people value him, to show that he still had the power to make his family fear him and dance to his tune. He would have loved it if Draco and I had gone on trying to appease him and get him to reverse the bond, or annoyed each other to the point where anything else would have looked better, even giving him control of the family back._

Lucius's tower was falling now, his world tearing apart at the seams, and Harry stood there and watched it with understanding but no sympathy. If not for Lucius's ego, then this would have happened a long time ago. He had become too used to getting his way, and too desperate to cling to the tattered shreds of his power in a world where the Dark Lord was dead.

"Lucius."

And that was Narcissa's voice, from behind him, down the corridor. Harry watched Lucius's shoulders stiffen, and wondered how much time he had spent resisting the thought of his wife.

The wife he might have made hate him with his stupid posturing, his stupid antics. Harry shook his head. He would have been hard-put to understand that when he was first married to Draco, since he had no conception that anything he did would be enough to drive Ginny away from, but now he did. The thought of losing Draco filled him with panic as cold as arctic water.

And Lucius had to know that what little power he could still command, in the family or outside it, was probably not going to matter if he couldn't get Narcissa on his side.

"Wife," Lucius said. He went on with a little more confidence when Narcissa didn't respond, instead standing still with her hands folded inside the sleeves of her robes. "I've--changed my mind. I will allow our son-in-law into the family and not--not try to convince Draco to marry someone else."

"That may be too late," Narcissa said, and moved a step closer. Her face was beautiful, but inhuman, Harry thought, in the remote expression that she fixed on her husband. "How do we know that you will not change your mind at a later date? Why did you not change it earlier?"

Lucius jerked his head up, cheeks mottled with his flush. He really didn't look attractive at all, Harry thought with some smugness, and tightened his hold on Draco's arm. Not compared to his son.

Draco glanced at him curiously, but Harry ignored him. He thought it was more important to keep quiet right now and let Lucius and Narcissa speak.

Besides, he didn't know Draco would appreciate the joke.

"What is this?" Lucius snapped, in a voice so low that Harry thought it was meant to sound impressive or frightening. It just made Lucius sound as if he had a cold. "A formal interrogation? If you want to dismiss me because you no longer think me good enough for this family, then perhaps I _should_ change my mind and retreat to trying to exile our son-in-law."

Harry thought about saying he had a name and Lucius should use it, but again it didn't seem like the right time to interrupt. Draco's hand tightening on his arm warned against it, too.

"And that is the reason we cannot trust you." Narcissa made a bow to Lucius that reminded Harry of the one you were supposed to give before you dueled someone. "You will change your mind with the veering winds of your pride and anger, because you put your own welfare before that of the family. That is not the way you taught Draco, and it is not the standard I shall hold you to."

She turned and departed, her back so straight and her stride so unfaltering that Harry half-thought she would look back over her shoulder once at Lucius, just to undercut the impression she was giving of coldness. But she didn't. She went, and left her husband staring after her.

"You're going to lose her," Draco said, his tone neutral as the blank front of an envelope. "You keep putting yourself before her, and that's not the way to live with a spouse." Again his hand tightened on Harry's arm; this time, Harry squeezed back.

Lucius gave them a lost, wild, hunted look. Harry began to wonder if his understanding had gone too deep after all. Lucius might realize that he had lost his power and the respect of his wife and son now, but that wasn't necessarily enough to make him reconsider. He'd been on the edge of realizing it before, and reversed himself, as Narcissa had so eloquently pointed out.

"I do not need to listen to you," Lucius said, but his voice was shaking, and his hand clenched in front of him as though he was trying to hold onto the trailing edge of Narcissa's robe, and use it to hold himself up.

"Of course you do," Draco said, and his voice was almost kind, although his eyes were implacable. "Since you don't have a prayer of retaining her if you do anything else."

Lucius turned and walked away. Harry had the impression that he was trying to mimic the way Narcissa had done it, but of course his stride was choppy and his head kept twitching as if he wanted to look over his shoulder. Harry did wait until he was out of sight to snicker, though. If Lucius was going to go back on his apparent resolve not to interfere with their marriage again, then Harry didn't want to be the one who made him do it.

The bond whined at him then, and he frowned and glanced up at Draco. The strain his jaw was under showed that he was feeling it, too.

"Why did it do that?" Harry asked. "We're close to each other, in the same room--"

Draco pulled him back into their bedroom and shut the door. "Too much time spent with other people, I think," he murmured, and tugged Harry close with one arm, seeking his mouth. "One of the books I skimmed yesterday mentioned that that's sometimes a consequence of an incomplete wedding ritual. It can even be the consequence for a couple that's _going_ to use one of the rituals that ties them closer together, but hasn't yet."

Harry let Draco kiss him, and then pulled back so that he could shake his head and Draco could see it. "I really don't understand this," he said. "We don't know that we're going to use one of those rituals yet--"

Draco stopped him with a patient glance.

"What I mean," Harry said, and he could feel the flush mounting his face, "is that we aren't going to use one of the rituals that would tie us together so closely that no one else would be able to touch us. So why would this bond be reacting like this? And to your father, someone I'm not attracted to and you know that you can't be attracted to?"

*

Draco had to smile a bit. It was obvious that Harry could still compartmentalize things to an amazing extent. He had felt the jealousy the bond inspired himself, but he didn't understand how those feelings influenced behavior. 

"Weren't you the one who accused me of being in love with my mother to the point that it's a good thing I'm not marrying a woman?" he asked, bowing his head so that he could nudge Harry's hair aside with his nose and find a barer patch of scalp. Harry shuddered, and Draco made a note to remember that to himself. "Yes, I thought that was you. The bond doesn't want us spending too much time or affection with anyone else, never mind that some of those people might be related to us by blood."

 _You don't always understand that, Harry. You think the way people_ should _react is the way they_ do _react. And that's one of the reasons that you're having so much trouble understanding the way your relatives acted towards you, and the way it continues to affect you._

But Draco kept that to himself for right now. It would only make Harry tense and nervous to bring it up again when they were concentrating, or should be concentrating, on their marriage, and he still hadn't figured out how to break the news to his mother. He would have to do it in exactly the right way.

Unfortunately, his mother's reaction would be less of a problem concerning the way he did it than would Harry's.

"I understand," Harry said. He abruptly pulled back and frowned at Draco. "I didn't tell you that my friends are coming this afternoon, did I?"

Draco let his eyes cool and shook his head. "Not exactly."

"But you did say that I could invite them." Harry's shoulders were tense, and his eyes were locked on Draco's face. "That you would prefer I invite them beyond the wards rather than that we go out to meet them."

"I said that, yes," Draco admitted reluctantly. He was beginning to regret it; he obviously hadn't been in his right mind when he thought that, because he'd just woken up and needed the shower before he could clear his thoughts. But he wouldn't take it back, for the sake of the arguments it would cause between him and Harry if he did. "I did," he repeated more strongly. "All right, fine. What do we have to do to get ready for them?"

"Remove the wards on a single fireplace." Harry had relaxed at his acknowledgment and was beaming happily at him. "That'll let them in through the Floo this afternoon."

Draco nodded. As long as he was with Harry--and even if he had wanted to leave Harry alone with his friends, the bond wouldn't let him be anywhere else--then he thought he could handle the disapproval and wonder in their eyes.

 _That's strange,_ he thought a moment later. _Is that really the worst thing I can come up with? That they might disapprove of me, instead of welcoming me with open arms? Apparently it is. And yet just a few days ago, I would have been sure the worst thing was that they were intruding at all, and soiling the Manor with their presence._

The bond might be teaching him some things about Harry and how to relate to him as well as teaching Harry about how to relate to pure-blood families. Draco had to admit he was less displeased about that than he would have thought.

"Now." Harry reached down to pull at the robes Draco had hastily thrown on, and smiled at him with all the wickedness of the world in his eyes. "What about another shower? I think you got sweaty after confronting your father. It's a very emotionally difficult time for you, after all."

Draco laughed and surrendered, kissing Harry hard enough to mash his lips into his teeth. Then he guided Harry towards the shower. If Harry had picked up sufficient comfort in their bond to tease him, then Draco found it hard to regret having to face his friends this afternoon.

*

"Harry! Thank God you're well."

Harry had to wince a little at the way the words burst from Hermione's lips right before she hugged him, and he felt Draco stiffen. Not stiffening in the good way, either. But his friends were here, they didn't know as much as they should about what had been happening to him, and they deserved some consideration, too. He hugged Hermione and ignored the way the bond whined in his ears. Draco was still at his side, and the hug didn't last as long as Hermione wanted it to, so that would have to be enough.

Ron came out of the Floo behind Hermione, giving Harry a more reserved smile and losing his smile altogether when he nodded at Draco. Draco sneered at him and tried to loom in a way he just wasn't made for, what with his slender frame. Harry nudged him in the ribs to make him stagger and grunt a bit, and shook Ron's hand.

"There's been a lot happening in the past few days," he said. "Why don't we sit down? I'm sure that you have a lot to tell us about the hunt for the decay wizards, too, Ron."

There was a circle of chairs arrayed in front of the fireplace, all of them exactly the same size, thickly padded, and different only in their colors. Hermione took a seat in the blue one, with Ron in the pale green one beside her, and she looked around the room with a measured gaze that Harry knew was probably weighing up the value of the gilded mirrors and the hand-carved wooden knickknacks and considering how many house-elves they would pay for. Or possibly how much the house-elves had to dust. Ron took her hand, and Hermione visibly squeezed it.

Harry winced, then, when he remembered what kind of memories Hermione would have of the Manor. At least she hadn't been tortured in this room. He sat down with Draco in one of the aqua chairs, and Draco clasped his hand between them the same way Ron and Hermione were doing. The bond quieted.

"What's this about, mate?" Ron said bluntly. "You mentioned some of it, the broken bond and the changed bond, the last time we talked, but I still don't really see why that means that you have to stay behind wards."

"And _I_ don't understand it at all," Hermione said firmly.

Harry explained the bond as best he could, making sure to talk about all the bands of metal he and Draco had earned and the way that Lucius had chosen to revoke the marriage bond at the worst possible time. With every word she heard, Hermione's lips tightened, and she exchanged more than one glance with Ron. Draco's grip got tighter on Harry's hand, too, and the whining of the bond in his ears picked up in both intensity and pitch.

Harry sighed. He had hoped he wouldn't need to be the peacemaker in a conflict between Draco and his friends, but it was looking more and more as if things would work out that way.

When he was done talking, Hermione leaned forwards. The intense compassion on her face made Harry sure of what she would say even before she opened her mouth.

"Harry. Are you _sure_ this is what you want? The bond limits your movement, and you can't do your job when you're stuck at home all day or have Malfoy following you around."

Harry squeezed Draco's hand before he could respond, and said, "No. We don't want to stay like this. So we're looking for a marriage ritual that will settle the bond as well as tie us together."

Hermione's mouth fell open. "You're _marrying_ him?"

"Yes," Draco said. "He proposed to me, not the other way around." His tone said how much he'd been itching to make that point.

"We were already married, technically," Harry said. "Now we're sort of...half-married. We want to correct that, and the best way to correct a half-marriage is with a real one. We've been reading up."

Ron, who had been quiet while they talked, abruptly shook his head. "Sorry, mate, but that might have to wait."

Draco snarled at Ron. Harry touched his arm to calm him and asked, "Why?"

"Because of some of the things the decay wizards have told us." Ron's eyes were fixed on his face, the expression he often wore when he was delivering the bad news to a victim's family. "The beast is wound into your magical signature the way the scars are wound into your body. You escaped halfway through its feeding and its conversion of you, but it--basically, you can't participate in any ceremony of commitment or any oathtaking because it'll interfere. The forced marriage didn't count since that was against your will." He took a deep breath. "But if you marry someone else, or take an Unbreakable Vow willingly, or anything like that, then it'll break loose. And start eating exactly where it left off."


	45. Steps in the Dance

Draco felt a blast of light and pain tear through him like a falling star. He took a deep breath to restrain himself and remember that he shouldn't kill the one who had brought him the news, the one who was concerned for Harry and might have told them something which would be valuable.

It was difficult, however, when Weasley was staring at them with a hounded expression that said more clearly than words that he thought Draco and Harry wouldn't be able to get married, and Granger wore an expression that had enough satisfaction mixed into the pity to poison Draco.

"The solution is simple, surely," he said, and was surprised that his voice did not tremble. Harry cast him a wondering glance, and Draco nodded to him. "We find a way to eliminate the beast. There was, at one point, a ritual Harry was interested in that might be able to do that. And then we wed." His fingers wound their way into Harry's, and he bore down with crushing pressure, the better to kill any objections before Harry might voice them.

Harry nodded. "Hermione can help me with the ritual," he said. "And now that we know that--"

Draco interrupted him by the simple expedient of leaning on his shoulder and staring at him until Harry shut up. "Why would you choose her to help with the ritual?" he asked. "Instead of me?"

"Because I don't want you at risk with the beast," Harry said, his eyes acquiring darker green flecks as he reached up and shoved at Draco's shoulder. Draco didn't move away. He didn't see why he should have to. "And Hermione has an emotional distance from this that means she'll be able to focus on the details of the ritual and not on how much danger I'm in--"

"I care about you, too, Harry," Granger interrupted, and she looked more than a little offended.

"I didn't mean that," Harry started.

"And I have no intention of standing back and letting you do this without me, not when it also affects my safety," Draco announced, with a hauteur that he thought should be sufficient to crush Harry's pretensions. "Really, Harry. If you had thought about this, you would understand--"

" _That's_ the only reason you care about him?" Granger's eyes and voice were bright with chilly precision, like ice lit by the sun. "Because it affects your safety? I'm sure that he would be interested in--"

"Will you _stop it_?"

That was, surprisingly, Weasley. They all shut up and stared at him, though in Draco's case that wasn't because he was surprised he had interfered in the conversation; of course all of Harry's friends would have something obsessive to say about his marriage, since they were obsessive about everything else concerning him. It was only that he was surprised Weasley's contribution was something sensible.

"This doesn't get us any further into solving the problem." Weasley ran a hand through his red hair, rendering it so bad that Draco thought it wouldn't get any worse without special help, and frowned at them. "I'm sure that we _all_ care about Harry and freeing him from the beast. Whether that's because we simply want him free from a threat to his life or whether we want to marry him later is immaterial."

"You're sure that we should be encouraging this?" Granger looked back and forth from her husband to Harry with a frown. "After all, we still don't know that Harry really agreed to this marriage of his own free will. We don't know how much the bond might have changed him while it was still in full existence, or how much it might be affecting him now that it's only half-there."

"I promise," Harry said, and to Draco his voice had all the triumphant echoes of a trumpet, "I'm not unwilling now. What the bond left us when it collapsed was our own _choices_ to protect each other. I want to be with him."

"Because you saved each other's lives?" Granger frowned more deeply. "I think most relationships need a stronger basis than that."

"Most relationships don't _have_ a stronger basis than that," Draco snapped, unable to stay silent any longer. He wondered how Harry _functioned_ when he was surrounded by people this consistently stupid. "We have each other, and that's the end of it. I won't let him go."

"If he wanted to marry someone else, you wouldn't, you mean?" Granger crossed her legs and gave him a shark's smile. "I think--"

"Stop it."

Harry was the one who said it this time, and Granger turned and paid more serious attention to him when he did. Draco wondered what she would think if someone told her that she obviously put more weight on the words of her best friend than on her husband. He had to hold back his temptation to tell her exactly that, in fact. "Why? Harry, do you really care for him outside whatever sex the bond might have compelled you to have and the dangers that you faced together?"

"I think that I do, yes." Harry frowned at her. "And I won't say I'm sure, because you'll pick it apart. This started with a forced bond. It's not going to end there. Yes, I want the beast gone as much as you do, so that I'll be safe and Draco will be safe and I can live the rest of my life with him. Can we concentrate on that, please? Not on whether your dislike of Draco is enough to make me reconsider marrying him?"

Granger flushed. Weasley reached out and took her hand, shaking his head. Draco thought he understood, then. Granger was indeed reacting this way because of her concern for her best friend, but she _thought_ she was reacting this way because of her logic and her analysis of what was best. She wouldn't like being told otherwise.

"I only want you to be happy," she murmured.

"I know." Harry reached out to her this time, and although the bond buzzed like an angry wasp, Draco permitted it. He thought both Harry and Granger needed the reassurance. "I've always known that, Hermione. And when this bond began, I would have agreed with you. I never could have seen myself ending up here. But now I am here, and...I want to be."

Granger surveyed Harry's face for long minutes before she bit her lip, nodded, and released his hand. Draco relaxed. He didn't gather Harry's hand up to himself, because he wasn't that jealous, but he did tighten his grip on Harry's shoulder.

"It's ridiculous to try and keep me at a distance," he muttered into Harry's ear. "I love you. I should be there."

"If we can find a ritual that has parts for everyone, fine," Harry said. He didn't look away from Granger. "Will the ritual that I planned to use to cleanse myself of impurities work for something like this, Hermione?"

Granger shook her head. Her Weasley had hold of her hand again, but Draco didn't think he needed to; from the signs he could read around Granger's eyes, that fine brain was ticking along its tracks again, without a chance of being distracted by undue worry. "That one would have been risky to do on your own, and it was meant to do nothing more than heal your scars. To eliminate the beast, we'll need a ritual that combines purification with killing." She paused, then said, "Inferno."

Draco knew what she meant at once. She wasn't the only one in the room with a good education. "Of course not," he said. He thought his voice was normal, but Weasley looked at him, and Draco paused and tried to moderate his tone before he went on. "It's far too dangerous."

"For me?" Harry asked. "I don't know what you mean, and I'd like to, before you get in some kind of private argument with Hermione over it."

Draco could feel himself flush. Harry had had the right to give him that scolding. He cleared his throat and said, "An inferno ritual is one that's meant to burn the evil out of something--an artifact, usually. It renders it clean, as if it had just come from the hands of its maker. The fire ensures the death of the Dark magic on it, or the possession by a malevolent ghost, or whatever else it was that made it unsafe to use. I've never heard of one used on a person." He challenged Granger with a single glance that he didn't think either Weasley or Harry would object to, since he and she were the only ones who knew how much emotion it carried.

Granger gave him back glance for glance, and said, "There are variations meant to work on people. What they need is preparation--they can't be done in the course of a single evening--and support. We'll need at least five people altogether, Harry and four operating outside the circle. Ron and I will be two of them, of course."

Weasley nodded, not as if his wife had made a decision for him without consulting him but as if he simply agreed. Harry smiled back at them. Draco felt a distant ache. He had a family closer than Harry's, but he didn't have the same experience with friendship that Harry did.

"I will be one," Draco said. "And so will my mother, who has already accepted Harry as a son-in-law to the family, with greetings in the name of her birth House."

Granger stared at him. Then she looked down as if she was going to check his wrists for signs of a cursed bracelet that would make him say such things. "That's a strong welcome," she said slowly. "If she's competent to do the magic and willing to commit, we can use her."

Draco gave Granger a brittle smile and kept silent. He didn't need the warning pressure of Harry's hand on his wrist, not at all. He understood that Granger had never met his mother under circumstances conducive to making a true estimate of her, so she couldn't understand how insulting her words were.

She would learn better.

"I can undergo any fire," Harry said, without any ornamental bravery in his voice. "But I am worried about danger to the four of you." He squeezed Draco's hand without looking away from his friends. It was a good thing the bond was contented with that slight touch, Draco thought, since _he_ wasn't.

"With a properly built ritual circle, there won't be any danger," Granger said, and gave them a smile that had enough light in it that Draco could see why Harry cared about her. "Shall we begin?"

*

Harry leaned back from the book and yawned widely enough to make his jaws crack. Sometimes he thought he had been reading about rituals most of his life, and he would go on reading about them until he died. The difference was that he was looking up protective rituals now, instead of ones that would lead to marriage.

He glanced up across the room, and watched Draco squinting at his own book, his frown pronounced. Close beside him sat Narcissa, who could read like a statue as well as stand like one. Now and then, her left hand scribbled notes on the parchment that rested on a table next to her chair.

"Are you growing weary, Harry?" Narcissa didn't look up from her book, but Harry knew he ought to have suspected that she would catch the slight flash of motion from his direction. "I can have Juli fetch a blanket so that you might go to sleep."

Harry opened his mouth to say that he could just go to his room and leave them here without bothering them, then closed it with a sigh. _The bond, right._ Sometimes he was almost capable of forgetting about that. "I'll be fine, Narcissa," he murmured. "I'm tired of research, not tired in a bodily fashion." He tossed the book on the couch beside him and shook his head. "I want to think about something that's not rituals."

"There is something else we might talk about," Narcissa said, laying down her book and watching him with luminous eyes. "But you have previously indicated that you were unwilling to speak with me about it."

 _The Dursleys._ Harry tensed and made sure that he didn't look at Draco. He didn't _think_ that Draco would have betrayed what Harry had told him about his relatives to his mother, not without asking Harry's permission. But he couldn't deal with this right now. He picked up the book again and shook his head.

Narcissa sighed. "The topic of what I can do to make you more comfortable in our home is so distasteful to you?"

 _Oh_. Harry hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know that I'll need a separate bedroom now," he said. "I could move my things into Draco's closet, and you could use it for something else."

"I think it as well that all of us should have a separate space," Narcissa said. "For the moments when those arguments all couples have become worse than normal." She paused. "I have wanted to make several gifts to you, but my fear that they would not be welcome holds me back. Would you want an owl of your own, Harry?"

Harry's throat tightened, and he shook his head. "My owl died in the war," he explained, when Narcissa studied him. "She was a gift from Hagrid, the first one a friend ever gave me. I don't want any bird to replace her."

Narcissa's eyes softened. "Yes, we never forget such special gifts," she said. "Well. There are other birds trained to fly post, although many of them are not as clever or widely-traveled as owls. A raven?"

Harry blinked again. "No, thank you," he said. "I said no bird, and I meant it. Not an owl, not a raven, not a pigeon."

Narcissa nodded and raised one hand as if she would protect her ear. "As you wish, Harry. But I would ask that you not shout at me."

Harry sighed and rubbed his hand over his forehead. "This is the reason I don't generally talk about things like this," he muttered. "I get angry too easily when people are only trying to help, and then I feel bad and feel even _less_ like talking about it. So. Sorry. But I don't want a bird. I don't want a new broom. I don't want an enchanted mirror. None of those things." He picked up his book. Suddenly, reading about rituals sounded positively appealing.

"Harry."

It was Draco this time. Harry reluctantly glanced up at him and felt the bond make a pleased noise in his ear. He grimaced. There were times that he wished he hadn't started thinking of the bond as a living creature. It had a personality like a hyperactive child.

Draco's eyes were steady and calm. "Why those particular gifts?" he asked. "What _would_ you like?"

"Privacy," Harry said shortly, and turned back to his book.

Draco moved. Harry kept the book up and between them as Draco moved over to the sofa to sit beside him, and hunched his shoulders when he felt Draco's hand moving on his side. Draco and Narcissa might not care that she'd almost caught them having sex, but Harry was a more private person and didn't want to do anything obscene in front of her.

Draco's hand settled on his side, moving back and forth, in a slow circle over his ribs. Harry released several high, loosened breaths and managed to lean against the sofa back, closing his eyes.

"That's better," Draco said, and then Summoned his book to him and went on reading beside Harry.

Gradually, the tension crept out of Harry's shoulders. He shot a glance at Draco, who was concentrating on his book, lips moving soundlessly as he read, and then at Narcissa. She looked as if she was doing much the same thing. 

Maybe it was all right if he said stupid things, because they would still listen to him and then back off and let him think about it for a while. Harry knew that, but there was a difference between knowing something and _knowing_ it.

After a while, he even managed to get used to the sensation of Draco's fingers tracing his ribs in circles and return to reading about bloody rituals. Bloody, sometimes, in every sense of the word.

*

"That's the ritual we had settled on, as well."

Draco still didn't like Granger. She spoke to him as if she was a camel looking to bite, and even through the flames and with the crackle and hiss of the Floo connection nearly overpowering her words, she sounded superior enough to add an edge to Draco's teeth. But when she nodded and then looked at Harry with an absolutely calm and confident gaze, he could see why Harry kept her around. She was a good planner, and she could make one feel that the wildest plans would succeed.

"Good," Harry said. "Then you know that we'll each have to contribute a bit of blood to make the ritual work?"

Draco eyed Harry's posture: crouched forwards on the edge of the couch, his knees hunched up, his hands loosely clasped between them. The bond was on the edge of shrilling, not because they were far from each other or too close to someone else, but because Harry was tense and shut up in himself, closed away from a sharing with Draco. Draco reached out and forcibly draped an arm over Harry's shoulders, drawing him against his side.

Granger looked hard at him. Harry blinked, and then he relaxed and turned back to Granger.

"That's all right?" he asked, and now there was a flare to his eyes and a tone to his voice that was much more familiar to Draco than the closed-in one that had made the bond whine. Oh, he knew where the shut-in look came from, all right. He just never wanted to see it again, and didn't think that he had given Harry an excuse to do it.

"Yes," Granger said. She sounded as if she was sliding back from a posture of attack. The camel had lowered its head and was innocently grazing when its rider turned around again, Draco thought wryly. "Ron's willing to do the same." She glanced at Draco. "I know that some pure-bloods are very touchy about the actual liquid in their veins. You and your mother can do this, Malfoy?"

"You should read fewer novels and more histories," Draco said lazily, and enjoyed watching Granger flush. "Harry is family. He's mine. Of course we're willing to contribute blood."

Granger too-obviously murdered any impulse she might have had to ignore him, audibly reminded herself that this was for Harry, and then turned around and concentrated on her friend again. "What are we going to make the circle for the ritual from? I know the decay wizards were using blood, but that was to summon and not contain the creature."

"They drew one binding rune in blood." Harry's eyes were steady. "It's got to be blood, and it's got to be mine."

Draco tightened his grip to near-crushing pressure, and didn't care who knew it. The bond was singing in his ears, almost screeching, reacting to his fear. Besides, he thought Granger wouldn't accuse him of hurting her precious friend, not when she was saying, "Are you mad?" too loudly to hear the bond.

"It has to be," Harry said. "Listen. The inferno ritual only works when someone uses the strongest possible binding to destroy the Dark magic inside it, and when it can prevent the magic from escaping to hurt the supporters."

"That doesn't mean--" Draco began, furious that Harry would have decided this without consulting him.

"Yes, it does." Harry turned on him, and it wasn't _fair_ that he was using the confidence Draco had given him by touching him against Draco, but it seemed to be happening anyway. "I want this to work, Draco. I want us to never have to worry about it again, so that we can get married and get on with the rest of our lives. We'll use my blood. It will attract the beast as well as bind it. It--made me bleed, among other things. We'll kill it."

"That much blood will kill you," Granger said, and Draco didn't know whether he should be angry or not about her stating his main argument first.

"Not if I leech it slowly, over several days," Harry said. "And there are such things as Blood-Replenishing Potions."

"That's not the _point_ ," Draco said. "The point is that there are other things that will work just as well, and that will be less dangerous to you." His hand tightened again, and now he was almost hiding Harry's face against his shoulder. That was fine. If a mouthful of shirt and sweat and human being who cared about him would change Harry's mind about this mad plan, then Draco was perfectly willing to do that.

"I don't care." Harry's mouth was set in a stubborn line. "I care about keeping you safe--"

"And not staying safe yourself?" Granger interrupted. "That would be you all over again, Harry. Do you remember that argument you and Ron had in the second year of Auror training? Do you really need to have it again with someone?"

Draco gritted his teeth, and hung onto his silence with an effort. Harry looked conflicted, and that meant he might listen. Interrupting now, out of sheer jealousy because Granger knew something about Harry that he didn't, would be counterproductive.

But then Harry's lips closed down into a single straight line, and he stood up and shook his head, shaking Draco's arm off at the same moment. "Not the same," he said. "This isn't an ongoing situation, the way that capturing Dark wizards for me is. This is a one-time event. And if I take long enough and drink all the potions I need, then I can avoid the loss of blood that would kill me."

He turned away, and Draco caught sight of the set of his jaw. He seized Granger's gaze when she opened her mouth again, and shook his head. She looked camel-like once more until she took a look at Harry.

Then she sighed, and put out one hand as if she could touch him through the flames. Draco was glad she couldn't, both because of the bond and because that gesture told him something about their friendship he hadn't understood so far.

"All right," she said. "All right, Harry, if that's the way you want it. But do make sure that you use the best potions."

"I'll be brewing them," Draco said.

Harry turned around and smiled at him. And even Granger gave him an approving nod, as though she assumed that Draco's brewing skills were up to par and she wouldn't be checking on them later.

 _You impossible, ridiculous, interfering, foolish idiot,_ Draco thought, as he said his farewells to Granger and stood to cross the room to Harry. _You're worth it, but you're probably going to give me a heart attack before I'm thirty._

_But one thing you're not going to do is die of blood loss, or die because of the beast. You aren't._


	46. Sharing the Same Blood

"And you're certain this is going to work," Ron said for the fiftieth time. Harry had been keeping track of it, for lack of anything better to do.

"I think that this is as close as we can come to the description of a perfect inferno ritual," Harry said, his hands steady as he poured the steaming liquid from one flask into the other. Draco had admitted that Harry's blood was the best material to make the circle that would protect the others--a battle Harry had thought he was going to lose--but had insisted that the blood be "purified" by exposure to different kinds of crystal and metal. That was all so much gibberish to Harry, but since he could accomplish it by pouring the blood from flasks and cups and casks and cauldrons into new ones, he was willing to go along with it.

It was strange, he thought, watching his blood foam and chatter into the new flask, which was made of what looked like faceted crystal and showed him the blood easily. The liquid no longer felt like it had come out of his veins. The color remained a bright, shining scarlet instead of drying, a deeper red than the kind that Harry usually saw, as though it was the heart of a new-blooming rose. And the magical potency of it made his teeth ache just leaning close to it.

"You look like a damn vampire, getting ready to drink it," Ron said crossly. "Can you lean away from it and focus on me for a second?"

Harry grinned at his best friend and did so. "Yes? Did you find something new in the decay wizard conspiracy?"

"Not exactly," Ron said grudgingly. He didn't seem to like admitting that the Ministry had done a perfectly competent job of rounding up Harry's attackers once they had solid information to go on. Harry had already listened to several tirades about how they should have done this _earlier,_ the moment Harry came back suffering those wounds. "But I do think that maybe there's some other way."

Harry sighed and set the flask of blood down. He wasn't supposed to pour it somewhere new more than once every half-hour, so that it could have the time to absorb the properties of whatever flask Draco had directed him to use next. "Some other way than to use my blood? We've been over this--"

"No. I meant, some other way than the inferno ritual to get rid of the scars and the beast." Ron's eyes were grim. "Mate, I've been reading about inferno rituals. It's not true that they've never been tried on people before. They have, especially people whose minds had been twisted by the Imperius Curse or Legilimency. None of them worked. All those people burned to death."

Harry tried to swallow, but his throat, unsurprisingly, felt dry. "That's what Hermione and Draco said, too," he agreed, and looked around at Draco's bubbling potions lab to distract himself. Another Blood-Replenishing Potion simmered away over a brazier, although Harry had drawn all the blood they'd need to make the circle. Draco seemed to feel that things wouldn't be _perfect_ until Harry had swallowed two potions for every drop of blood he drew. "But they think they can make this one successful."

"Harry."

Ron's voice was shaking. Harry turned around, staring, and saw him clench his fists and turn away to glare at the wall.

Harry came up behind his best friend and put a hand on his shoulder. "Ron, what is it?" If Ron had discovered something about the inferno ritual that distressed him, Harry wanted to know what it was--although he was also sure that Ron would have taken any serious concern straight to Hermione first off. Maybe Ron needed a different kind of reassurance than the theoretical ones she could give him, though.

Ron took a deep breath, and then whispered savagely, "I want to destroy them, for what they did to you. And I want to destroy Lucius Malfoy, too. It's not _fair_ that you should have to go through with this."

Harry tightened his grip on Ron's shoulder, not knowing what to say. No, life wasn't fair, and that had been something he'd thought Ron had always accepted better than he had. Harry was the one who had flailed around during their fifth year convinced that life _should_ be fair and that that meant he shouldn't have to fight Voldemort or do anything else involving him.

But then again, Ron had always wanted to help, too. And standing back while Hermione did the research and Draco brewed the potions had to be wearing on him. He had helped capture the decay wizards, but for the past several days, there had been little that he could contribute.

Harry licked his lips, and thought of something Ron could do, something that might make him feel more useful. Hermione and Draco didn't need explanations like this, because they seemed to grasp the theoretical implications right away. Harry, though, didn't. And he thought he should understand everything before they began the inferno ritual.

Not to mention that Harry and Draco were currently experimenting with how long the bond could stretch apart before it summoned them back together, and Harry could use something to distract him from the whining thrum of the bond in his ears and the way it seemed to cut into his stomach.

"Tell me again," he said. "Tell me why the beast would have manifested and attacked if Draco and I had just tried to complete the wedding ritual without doing the inferno one first. I never understood that."

Ron gave him a dark look. "You don't have to humor me."

"I can't answer your questions, either," Harry pointed out. "But you can try to answer mine."

Ron considered that, and then smiled at him. "Fair enough. The beast stopped when you were about half-eaten, apparently. That's what the decay wizards said, and I reckon they should know." Ron made a disgusted grimace.

Harry swallowed. He tried not to think about the decay wizards summoning beasts and eating them, or sacrificing people to them, when he could. There was only so much that he could stand to think about, when it came to something that ate people. "All right. But why wouldn't it have manifested through the forced marriage bond? That was a ceremony that was complete, since Lucius just had to will me and Draco together for it." He glanced at the four-banded ring on his finger.

"Because that was still only _half_ like a marriage bond," Ron said. "You had to live together, and you lost a few other things, but not everything. And you fought it. It was--an incomplete ceremony, basically, like the state the beast was caught in when it was pulled into your scars. It couldn't finish eating you, but it left its mark. And it didn't escape, but you didn't subdue it completely, either. Are you all right, mate?" he added suddenly.

Harry's skin felt chilled, and he didn't think it was from the pulling and humming of the bond. He smiled at Ron and nodded sharply. "Well enough to finish talking about this. I think I need to know. So even the forced marriage bond ending didn't release it, because that was a half-state, too. But being completely married would complete the cycle and release it in some way?"

"Exactly," Ron said. "That kind of bond would be the opposite of the situation it attacked you in in every way. You would be willingly entering it--they said something about the forced marriage bond also keeping the beast quiet because it was unwilling, like the way you felt when it had you--and it would be a full ceremony, carried all the way through to the end. That would basically kick the beast into rising and trying to finish what it had started, because it had a prior claim on you, in its eyes." Ron shuddered. "That's as much as I understood. Trying to follow it much more than that bothered me."

Harry gave him a sickly smile. "Me, too, mate."

Ron clapped him on the shoulder, and they stood there in silence, watching Harry's blood steam in the crystal flask. Harry relaxed a bit. The pull of the bond on him _had_ quieted, now that he had something else to think about. He wondered if perhaps he and Draco needed to simply do that now and then, test the limits of the bond so that they didn't give in and start thinking that they needed to remain near each other no matter what happened and how dangerous it might be.

Still, he was happy when Draco opened the lab door and came in with the next flask for his blood, his eyes immediately finding Harry's and holding them. He wasn't so happy when Draco saw Ron's hand on his shoulder and did his own version of the steaming in the crystalline flask currently cradling the blood, but they all had their challenges and limitations, and he would have done the same thing if he saw Draco with a friend of his.

As for the implication that Draco would keep on doing it, to Ron and Hermione at least, even when the bond was settled and their marriage complete...

_We'll face that particular challenge when we come to it._

*

If Draco tried to think about how many factors were going into the inferno ritual at the moment and how many things could go wrong, he would also go mad. So he concentrated on the individual steps in front of him.

They had chosen a room in the Manor for this, of course. Choosing somewhere else had been possible, but the one time Harry spoke of it, Narcissa had turned and looked at him with arctic cold in her eyes. That had settled that. And Draco had agreed. Even letting Weasley and Granger inside the wards again was not as panic-inducing for him as trying to conduct such a delicate ritual somewhere else would have been. 

The room had served various purposes down the years: grand hall for impressing potential allies and prisoners of war; guest bedroom for Dark Lords; potions lab or library for the Malfoys who had been more studious than Draco. It was large enough, with rafters that rose to a curved half-dome to hold up the roof, and the walls were made of layered marble, a solid mass. Draco approved. They would need a room that didn't burn for the inferno ritual, and one that stood a chance of containing the magical explosion in case something went wrong.

Before the ritual began, he had taken one other precaution, with his mother's full knowledge and approval. He had located Lucius, sitting in one of the rooms in the wing Draco had permitted him to retain, and placed him in an enchanted sleep that would last ten hours. No need for him to interfere. On the other hand, no need to leave him in a permanent coma should something go wrong with the ritual and both Draco and Narcissa die. The leadership of the family would return immediately to him in that case, and he would have to be free to make decisions.

Draco felt his mood tremble like a flame when he thought about that. But there was no good in setting up a ritual like this and then refusing to face _all_ the consequences.

There was already a circle grooved into the center of the room's floor, wide and deep and layered with gold at the bottom. Draco had worried about whether they had enough of Harry's blood to pour into it and complete the circle, but Granger had told him that they had more than enough. Harry had drawn more than he'd told Draco about, and drunk more potions.

Draco hadn't said anything about it as they prepared for the final steps of the ritual, because he did think that Harry needed full and unbroken concentration to carry out what he'd promised. But come to the end, with everyone safe and the beast destroyed, he and Harry were going to have a talk.

Harry walked into the center of the circle first, his head bowed and his breathing calm. He had stripped his shirt so that he could bare the scars to the world, and Draco gritted his teeth when he saw the way Weasley and Granger looked at him. _He might think that he's ugly with those scars and that no one else could possibly want him, but he's wrong. He could have had either of them for the asking. Or both._

Harry would probably tell him that he was wrong and it was just the bond urging him to jealousy, but Draco didn't think so. He had to bite his tongue twice as Harry knelt down in the middle of the circle and watched Draco and Granger make the circle, pouring the blood into the long groove. Draco still didn't think there would be enough until he saw all the flasks and cauldrons and casks that Granger brought out. The blood had been purified and magically charged by its contact with the different kinds of materials that they had given Harry, and then thinned as far as possible, so that it would create a single layer of liquid in the circle. 

_All of that flowed in your veins,_ Draco thought, and glared at Harry out of the corner of his eye as he poured, making sure that none of the blood slipped onto the floor or otherwise away from them. _Stubborn oaf._

Harry smiled at him as long as they could keep eye contact, and then bowed his head and went back to concentrating. Draco knew he needed that concentration to summon up the beast and make it respond to the calling ritual, so he kept silent as he poured and poured and poured.

He knew the moment they finished, when the stream of blood coming from Granger's direction joined the one coming from his. There was a great steam and puff, and a scarlet column of light rose to the ceiling. It settled back down into a crimson glow. Harry was surrounded by a ring of his own blood, and Draco wouldn't be able to reach him for the rest of the ritual.

_Or ever again, if this goes wrong._

Draco bit his tongue against the temptation to call out to Harry _or_ to scold himself, and then retreated with Granger to the far corners of the room. She took up the far left-hand corner, while he took the far right-hand one. His mother moved into position opposite him, Weasley opposite Granger.

Granger began the ritual, her voice so smooth and confident that Draco could have believed she did this every day. "I bring gifts for the seasons." On the floor in front of her she laid a small object that Draco found it difficult to distinguish from this distance, but he knew what it would be. "A bare twig for the winter." A green leaf followed. "New growth for the spring." Then a rose from the Manor gardens. "A flower for the summer." And one of last year's leaves, golden and trampled and gathered from the woods outside Hogwarts. "Old growth for the autumn."

The air flashed, hard, and sparked. When Draco could see again, a glittering spiral rose in front of Granger, twisting through the colors of black, green, red, and gold. He let out a shaking breath. That was the beginning, then. Partially to call up power, partially to protect themselves from the fire, each of the four of them would call upon a significant four things, magically or naturally important.

And it was his turn, now.

"I bring gifts for the elements." Draco reached out and gathered up several coals from the brazier that burned beside him, dropping them in front of him. "Banked flames for the fire." Next came the crumbling clods of dirt he had gathered from the gardens. "Fertile soil for the earth." He tried not to flinch as he poured a little of the ditch-water he'd gathered that morning from its glass onto the floor. He wasn't dirtying anything, and the house-elves could clean it up later. "Fresh rain for the water." Last, he pursed his lips and blew out. "My clean breath for the air."

The spiral that formed in front of him blazed scarlet and brown, blue and white. Draco watched it and tried to ignore the sped-up pounding of his heart as he realized that it blocked his vision of Harry kneeling in the circle. Not completely--he could still see Harry's head and shoulders if he squinted--but enough that he had to bite down on his tongue again so he wouldn't snap out a protest.

Weasley began to speak, his words weirdly distorted. After a moment, Draco figured out that that was also due to the spiral, and managed to relax. They would get through this, he tried to reassure himself. They _would._ They would show the beast that it couldn't separate them, and with that, they would show the decay wizards, and Harry's friends, and Lucius, and everyone else who thought they might have better lives on their own.

"I bring gifts for the directions," Weasley chanted. "Ice for the north." His wand flared, and the stones in front of him iced over. "Light for the east." Another spell made brilliance pour briefly over them, as if they stood outside in the gardens. "Heat for the south." Draco flinched as the fire of Weasley's spell touched his skin, then scowled at himself. He had to remember that they would face fire greater than that in a matter of moments. "Darkness for the west." And quiet blue-black twilight this time, reminding Draco of the calm, magical moment he had sometimes seen in between the moment the sun set and the moon rose.

The spiral that formed to guard Weasley wrapped around his body instead of floating in the air in front of him, but Draco knew it was supposed to, and didn't worry. The colors here cycled more quickly, the colors of the spells, and he found it more difficult to see them.

That left his mother, the most graceful and confident of them all, and Draco turned to her with simple faith that she would get it right. She nodded as if reassuring him, although Draco knew she would have trouble seeing the expression on his face. She knew him well enough to reckon what he was feeling, however.

"I bring gifts for the wandering stars," she said. It had seemed appropriate that she take the planets, since she belonged to a house of people named for the stars and the constellations. "A feather for the small and swift Mercury, beloved of the sun." A dove's wing-feather lifted into the air and then fluttered to the ground, blown by her breath. "A candle for the bright Venus, lodestar of love and brilliance of the evening." The candle flared into life at her feet; Draco hadn't seen her wand move. "A grain of salt for Terra, beloved of its oceans." The light caught on the salt and made it glitter like a diamond. "A drop of blood for the ruddy Mars, proclaiming war on the horizon."

She cut her wrist without pausing, and the drop of blood rolled out, hung, hesitated, fell.

And that was the beginning, as the drop hit the stone and sealed the spiral that wrapped around her, bright as dreams or Mars, and Draco brought his wand down and hit the base of his wrist hard.

His veins seemed to splinter open, and the blood poured out. Weasley and Granger were bleeding themselves at the same time, a few drops and no more. The more they gave to the ritual and the flowing protection that Harry's blood had already set up, the stronger the spell would become, but on the other hand, the weaker they would become for the feats of magic that they needed to perform to help Harry contain and control the beast.

The blood added a fifth ring of red to all their spirals, and then rose up above them and formed a completely separate one, turning there, glittering and shining and flashing. Surrounded by symbolic fours, guarded by as much protection as they could summon with a week of preparations, Draco turned towards Harry. He was the one who would have to give the signal to the rest of them to add their magic to the circle.

Harry still knelt in one place, his head bowed, breathing steadily and softly. Draco knew it would have to be so, but he still gritted his teeth, and wished they hadn't chosen a ritual that required him and Harry to be separated.

*

It wasn't the hardest thing he had ever done. He would always have that comfort now, Harry thought dryly, because at least two things would always be harder: walking through the Forest towards Voldemort when he thought he would have to die permanently to save the world, and breaking free of the beast in the darkness.

This wasn't the darkness. His friends were with him, his mother-in-law. His husband. They were doing all they could, as the supporters of the ritual, to protect him and stand by him.

But he was the one who had to make that final choice, deliberately. That was the difference between inferno rituals to free possessed objects of their possession and inferno rituals to free _people_ of a possession. A cursed box or book had the magic inflicted on them from the outside. A person had to make the choice. And if they didn't, the ritual would fail.

At last, with a pass of his wand, Harry conjured flame from his blood in the circle around him. Above him, the spirals took up the shine and reflected it, and he was caught in a baking ring of heat.

There would never be a better moment. It must be now.

Harry set himself on fire.

The flames ripped cries from him as they came out through his skin, as they caught on his clothing, as they sprouted from under his nails like bright claws. Harry had to control the impulse to roll on the floor and smother them that way. He knew the truth. They couldn't be smothered. They would merely keep burning, and he would look like an idiot. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, doing all he could to surrender to the heat, to look calm and confident and cool--

_Maybe not cool._

The power called up from beyond the circle boomed at him. The spirals turning near the ceiling, made of burning blood, beamed more fire down at him. It hurt like a hundred bites all over Harry's body, every second, and the tears running down his face vanished into stream, but it was digging into the scars and reaching for the beast, calling the beast, bringing it to the surface and vanquishing the darkness with both the purifying heat and the light that the beast couldn't withstand--

Then Harry heard it.

The sound that had haunted his nightmares, the sound of the beast's suckers fastening on flesh, the ripple and tear of the great bat-wings beating the air.

 _I can't do this.  
_  
His mind descended into a screaming maelstrom, the memories overwhelming him again. He was back in the dark, crouched there with the scabbed sores forming on his buttocks from the pile of feces he sat in, feeling his flesh become liquid and flow away into the suckers, feeling his mouth stuffed with the false food that kept him alive every time he tried to scream--

Death was better than this. Eating the beast was better than this.

His magic lashed out, and Harry opened his eyes.

The beast hovered above him, formless head and enormous wings and a body composed entirely of the hanging suckers around a flowing, amorphous mass. The suckers reached for him.

Harry lost his mind.


	47. Within the Ring

Draco would have known something had gone wrong without Harry's scream. The bond linked suddenly around his waist like a rope and tugged almost hard enough to cut him in half. Draco swore and staggered. The protective spiral in front of him flashed warningly.

Draco did hold himself back for a moment, wondering if the bond was simply responding to the ritual circle in between them. If that was the case, he couldn't do anything about it, and he would just have to suffer. Harry had to make this choice by himself and give his will over to the inferno ritual to complete it successfully--

But the bond yanked again, and then Harry's scream rose up, despair in it beyond anything that Draco had heard. He was running without thought, straight towards the barriers of shimmering flame and burning blood that barred him from Harry, without thinking about how he would get through them, just that he needed to. The ring on his finger buzzed and rang as though it would shake itself apart.

"Malfoy, _stop!_ "

Granger--she was the only one in the room who would speak his name in that tone--but Draco didn't care. There was danger and then there was danger, and he was going to be at Harry's side to face the latter kind.

Her spell pulling him to a halt seconds later did make him think, though. Draco gasped, caught without breath between that spell and the pull of the bond. Then Granger stepped up beside him and slapped him smartly across the face.

 _She must have been wanting to do that for years,_ Draco thought, as his vision hazed black and red with outrage and then cleared. He nodded sharply to Granger, who didn't look convinced, and Harry screamed again.

Granger went pale. Oddly, that relaxed Draco. At least he knew that she cared about Harry as well as about all her theories proving correct because the ritual had gone right.

"We have to leave him to face this on his own," Granger whispered. "We've done our parts of the ritual, and you _can't_ interfere in an inferno ritual, those spirals are there to protect us in case something goes wrong with the sheer volume of magic in the air, we push too far and do something wrong _deliberately_ and they can't protect us--"

The bond yanked at Draco again, making him stumble several steps forwards. "It doesn't matter," he said. "The bond is going to pull me across the ring anyway." He watched Granger look as if she would faint, and felt a small, mean satisfaction that he would deny if anyone ever asked him about it. "The problem _is_ , Granger, there's more than one kind of magic in operation here. And the half-marriage Harry and I have doesn't care about the inferno ritual."

Harry screamed again, and Draco was done talking. He turned and flung himself at the curtain that separated them--

Only to recoil with a burned hand and smoking robe. He beat the smoke out and stared at his hand. It looked as though he had just plunged it deliberately into one of the large fires his mother favored. Blisters were springing up already, and the skin was red and black and hurt like hell.

"You have to do something," Weasley said from behind Draco, iron and tears in his voice.

"Yes, but I can't get burned to death doing it," Draco snapped, and closed his eyes, and stood there, forcing himself to ignore Harry's next scream.

There had to be a way to cross the barriers between them, but not do it physically. After all, the marriage bond managed to do it. Draco had half-thought they'd be completely isolated from each other once the barrier of fire rose, but obviously that wasn't the case.

There had to be a way.

_The bands. The bronze band. Harry and I were separated from each other when the decay wizards captured us, but he still managed to hang onto his sanity and call the beast back when it attacked me._

It couldn't be exactly the same, Draco knew, even as hope cooked him from inside the way the fire would do from the outside and his eyes snapped open, because they didn't want Harry to put the beast back in himself but burn it _out_. That was the entire point of the inferno ritual. But it might be possible to technically fulfill the condition that he had to do it himself and still give him help from the outside.

Draco pointed his wand at his own temple. He saw, from the corner of his eye, Granger take a step forwards. She seemed to fear that he'd off himself. His mother, though, stared at him with extreme calm. Draco nodded to her--she was the only one in the room who completely trusted him--and then spoke the words of the spell that had just come to him.

" _Mente vox!"_

The world in front of him snapped down and narrowed to a single tunnel, black with the sprinkles of stars. Draco felt himself rushing down it, an arrow of magic and mental force that crossed the distance between him and Harry, and landed in the middle of a maelstrom.

Harry's thoughts.

Draco flung up barriers against the terror and began to call, over and over again, demanding that Harry pay attention to him, that he _focus_ on him and not on the fear that wanted to eat him. _Harry! Harry! I'm here! You're not alone!_

He had no idea if it would work. But leaving Harry to die, or dying himself, were no longer options. Not when they had come so far.

*

Faces and scraps whirled past him. Names. Lives. Memories. Places. Houses. Stones. Animals. Books. He knew they had all been in order once, but they weren't now, and he sacrificed them to the fear so that they would stand between him and it.

There was a beast, and he had to avoid it. Confronting it head-on would destroy him. He knew that, and he dodged, in his mind and his magic and his body. The suckers reached for him, and slipped and flailed off. He was running through the fire, and he turned even that into a wall, so that the beast couldn't reach past it and find him.

But then one of them caught him, and he screamed because it was there, and the darkness was there, and he was there, and he would rather kill himself than live like that through death. He started to pull down some of the barriers, some of the ones that he'd lifted without thinking to protect himself against the pain of the fire, because at least if he died in the flames then he wouldn't die squirming under the beast.

A voice cried out in the darkness of his mind, words flowered, a presence was there. _Harry!_

It was Draco. Harry didn't know how he could possibly be there when he would have had to cross fire and blood to do it, and he didn't care. He reached out and grabbed Draco in his mental arms, pulling him in so that Draco squirmed and grunted, and crushed him close.

 _You're not alone,_ Draco said. _You can still destroy the beast, if you want to._

 _There's no way,_ Harry told him, his mind rebounding with pinwheels of gold. Draco was with him, and that meant he wouldn't die alone, but he didn't think it meant he wouldn't die. Opening his eyes revealed the beast to him; staying still revealed the suckers; and he couldn't dodge through the fire forever, even if the beast seemed beset by it, too, and couldn't reach him. _I don't want you to die with me, and that's what will happen if you cross the circle. The ritual or the magic or the beast or the fire or_ my _magic will kill you._

 _You're right,_ Draco said. _You have to be the one to face down this monster._

 _But I've already tried._ Harry whirled around past another reaching tentacle and hid behind a dancing pillar of flame. The beast soared over it and reached down again. Harry rolled on the floor, his hysteria flooding him for a moment so that he couldn't hear Draco's voice. _How do I do it?_ he whispered, when he could.

Draco answered not with words, but with strength.

Magic came pouring across the barrier, guided by the mental conduit. Harry felt it open in the midst of him, the bond and the power that Draco had shown Harry when he showed him the statues in the Malfoy tomb and the sparks that had burrowed into his skin when Narcissa welcomed him to the Malfoy family in the name of the House of Black and the light that had flickered and danced between them for each of the metal rings.

 _You have to do this yourself,_ Draco whispered again. _But spouses are traditionally one person, in the strictest of the marriage rituals. So I can give you what help I can, and it will be as if it came from yourself--but you still have to be the one to make the decision to use that magic._

Harry opened his eyes, and he could _feel_ his sanity cracking as he looked at the beast. It had no eyes, he thought, his mood skittering up a staircase of feeling and ashes; it was all _mouth_. It would devour him. It would--

_Harry!_

Draco shouted back to him, Draco was his anchor, and Harry had to close his eyes and shake his head. _What kind of bloody good am I going to do about that thing when I can't even_ look _at it to place a strike?_ he snarled.

There was a moment of silence, physical and mental, save for the crackling of the flames and the wings of the beast as it tried to maneuver closer to him. Harry clung to the silence. It was preferable to listen to than almost any other noise right now.

 _Then there's no choice,_ Draco said, and his voice was so quiet that Harry couldn't make out the emotion in it. _I'll have to cross the circle. I can't leave you to die alone._

 _But you can't,_ Harry said.

 _We don't know that for certain,_ Draco said. _I shouldn't have been able to make contact with you mentally, either, according to the strictest interpretation of the inferno rituals. But I did. I think the marriage bond has something to do with it. Its half-state is something new, something the rituals weren't created to interact with because it wasn't around_ to _interact with. But it might protect me. I think I can cross._ And Harry heard--well, he must not have _heard_ it, he couldn't _hear_ it, but he must have sensed the gathering of impulse and intention through Draco's presence in his mind--Draco getting ready to leave behind the sane things he could still do and cross the circle.

 _You're mad,_ Harry told him. _You can't do this._

_I can't let you die._

That was it, the iron and steel in the words, the platinum and the bronze. Draco wasn't giving a hopeless wail of despair; he was saying something he was literally incapable of doing, like flying without a broom.

 _Oh, Draco,_ Harry said, and he reached out for another fear, one deeper than the fear that the beast would eat him, one that had always been there, running like a dark river beneath the surface. The fear that someone else would die for him, that he couldn't protect people. _I can't let you do that._

He opened his eyes, and he turned to look on the beast with magic flowing from his fingertips.

The wings covered him with their shadow. Where they passed, the fire was not. The hanging suckers surged up and then down, and Harry knew they would make contact with his body and that he would scream when they did so and that that would be, in so many ways, the end of him.

It would be the end of him if he let it be. It would be the end of him if he could not master the fear.

The terror was there, surging, ready to leap the fragile walls that he had built against it.

But he wielded terror against terror, the way he had when he thought that the beast coming from him would consume Draco in their captivity, and he reached for the fire of the inferno ritual and lit it again, this time inside his brain.

Draco cried out, and Harry flinched. He didn’t know using fire like that could cause Draco pain, but of course it made sense, because Draco was linked to him at the moment and sharing the same mental space.

_Are you all right?_

_What are you doing?_

Harry didn’t know himself. The fire leaped around him and soared and looped back, the flames imagined in his brain really _there,_ burning away the fear, burning away the doubt and the conviction that there was no way he could face the beast. The fire on his body was dancing higher in response, and he knew the beast was flinching back from it as it rolled nearly to the roof, to the height of the spirals that floated above him. The spirals bent the flames back on themselves and so redoubled their heat. That was their function in the first place, to prevent the supporters from being burned by an inferno ritual gone out of control.

 _What I’m supposed to be doing?_ Harry asked, but he knew that he was asking himself more than Draco.

Draco said something, but Harry lost it in the rush and roar of the fire, in the way the beast suddenly tried to cut through the walls of red and gold to get at him. He flung an arm across his eyes, because there were limits to his bravery, and began to retreat.

The flames in his mind promptly burned lower. Draco said something sharp, and Harry knew the tone although he couldn’t hear the words. When he paused, then he _did_ hear them.

_You can’t retreat! You can’t show fear like that! You have to prove to the beast that you can master it, and the terror it causes._

Harry shivered and locked his legs, then dropped his arm. His reason still tottered when he looked at the beast, his throat seeming to shake separately inside him from his tongue and his stomach, but he thought of Draco crossing the circle, or Hermione and Ron burning to death, or Narcissa with her expression of brilliance and steadiness becoming uncertainty, and that was worse.

The beast was directly above him now, and as Harry watched, one of the tendrils lowering towards him opened its sucker on the end wide, like an eager flower. Out of the one right next to it flowed the thick white liquid that Harry knew would congeal into what was essentially tasteless bread, the nourishment that had ensured he didn’t die of starvation when the beast had him last time.

_The fire!_

Harry wasn’t sure whether the answer came from him or Draco, and he didn’t much care. What mattered was that he finally remembered what the ritual had been designed to do in the first place, and no, retreating madly or even facing his fear wasn’t it.

He set himself on fire for a third time. Body and mind were already burning. He imagined his will and magic as twin flames, and they drove into the bloody scars on his back, bearing down, stabbing in, cutting at the connections that bound the beast, tendrils and all, to him.

He recalled it, deliberately, brought up the memories and threw them on the flames, thought of the bread and burned up the taste, knew the feeling of the suckers liquefying flesh and power and sacrificed them. He was part of the immolation, no longer separate from it, burning and knowing that he could die from the burning. The fear was behind him in the same way survival was. Neither was the goal now. It was burning the beast out, sucker and tendril, so that if he went to his death, at least the death would be a pure sacrifice, a clean passing.

He burned, and the scars burned, and he felt a moment’s peace and contentment as he thought about what would happen when he finished.

The beast screamed.

Not the cries that Harry had heard so often, the hunting cries meant to stun anything who heard it into terror. Or the soft whimpers it had given, or the sucking motions it had used on him. He was no longer prey. He was no longer in the darkness.

He was in the light, the burning light. He stood in the heart of the sun. He was fire, and he was everywhere, and there was no place that a shadow could hide.

He pressed forwards, and now the beast was the one who retreated before him, tendrils waving as though it would cover its nonexistent eyes. The wings beat in agitation, and at one point it tried to rise out of the circle.

But it had been brought here, borne here, by him. Harry had half-eaten it and made it hibernate in his scars. This was the moment when it finished once and for all. Harry burned its tethers in his scars, and burned it at the same time.

The fire bit deeper, burned brighter. Dimly, Harry could feel the pain, but since he had lit so many flames, since so much of him _was_ flame, it felt petty to think that he could hurt from it. He laughed aloud.

Draco laughed in his head, or shrieked. Harry didn’t know which one it was. He did spare one moment to reach out and lavish a caressing thought on Draco.

_Dear one. I love you so much. I’m doing this for you._

As the fire burned through, cleansing and purifying in exactly the way it was meant to, Harry realized that was true. Yes, he was doing it so that the beast would never harm him again, but also because it might have harmed Draco. He was pressing forwards so that he would never have to deal with what had nearly happened when they earned the bronze band. 

Draco’s sanity was his to protect, and so was his destiny, and so was his life, and so was his blood. Harry smiled, and he knew it probably looked like an insane rictus, and he didn’t care.

Everything was fire.

Including the buzzing song that he knew had started from the ring where it gripped his finger. But Harry didn’t have the time to slow down and look. He continued pressing forwards, and now the beast had reached the far edge of the circle and the burning blood, and it had nowhere else to go.

It turned to face him and spread its wings. The noise of them would have terrified Harry into instant compliance once, but he couldn’t hear it now, not over the noise of the burning. He laughed at the beast, and stepped forwards. Draco’s face was in his mind, and Ron and Hermione’s, and Narcissa’s, and Ginny’s, and Ian’s, and the rest of the Weasleys’. It was for them, not himself, that he did this, and although he had to be the one who made the choice, he knew that gave him a strength that the creators of the inferno ritual couldn’t possibly dream of.

There came the moment when the beast had to choose between him or the circle, between the fire and the fire. Harry spread his arms wide and laughed and laughed. Then he lunged.

The beast soared backwards, and its wings caught at last, going up like fireworks. It screamed again, but the hunting cry was swallowed by the crackle, and it vanished into the roar. Harry watched, vindictive, satisfied, smiling, until he was sure that the last drifting pieces of it had been swallowed by the fire.

Then he had another choice, and the flames leaped around him and sang about it, while Harry stared into the darkness that floated between them like the last stubborn pieces of the beast.

He knew that coming back would entail pain. There was no telling how badly he had been burned, and how long it would take him to recover. If he embraced the pain and the fire completely, he would fade when it did. The beast was conquered. He was purified. He would, indeed, make a clean death of his passing.

But it was never a choice, Harry thought. Not when he had people in the world who would help him bear the pain of healing.

He turned back and spread his arms again, only this time he put the fire behind him. This time, he walked towards life and the future, and the pain that came with him could be borne.

He wasn’t meant to live forever in the midst of steady light.

*

Draco came back to his own body with a stagger. Being sealed so in Harry’s mind had meant that he experienced some of what Harry did, but, he was sure, not all of it. And he was still trying to breathe.

For Harry to have gone through what he did, summoned the will and the energy and the drive to push the fire into the beast, to push the fire into his own _scars_ , was something Draco could not have understood without being there. He wondered if he would ever find the words to explain it to those who, like his mother, would have seen the ritual only from the outside, as a wall of flame, and perhaps caught a glimpse of shadow just before Harry destroyed the beast, but nothing else.

He didn’t think so.

And he understood something else, something that made him step forwards at once as the fire died and Harry crossed the circle. Harry had done this all for love of him.

There was no higher compliment.

Harry was soot-covered and burned, his hair singed short by the flames, but he smiled at Draco. Draco took his hands and gave him a soft kiss on the lips, not wanting to touch anywhere else for fear that he would aggravate the burns. There were no words for what he wanted to say, anyway.

Weasley and Granger shrieked, of course, and came running. Draco knew his mother was following at a more sedate pace.

“Did you see it?” Harry whispered.

“I _felt_ it,” Draco said, because “seeing” seemed such an inadequate word.

Harry gave him a single blazing glance, and then shook his head. “No. I meant _this_.” He held up his left hand, and Draco looked down.

The ring had worn a half-melted appearance ever since his father broke the marriage bond. Platinum and steel, bronze and iron, were still there, but didn’t twine neatly with each other; the braids broke off at odd places.

Now there was something else there, a deep blue glaze, mending the broken places and tying the other braids together. Draco stared at it. He didn’t recognize it, and then he did, and he didn’t know what it meant.

“What is it?” Harry whispered.

“Cobalt,” Draco said. “I—have no idea. It wasn’t in the books I read.”

“I know what it means,” Harry said. “I know it means that I chose you.”

Draco didn’t have time to say anything else as Granger ran up to them and Weasley reeled up, tried to hug Harry, and was scolded sharply by Granger, but he caught Harry’s eye.

He knew he would search out meanings, but for now—

For now, Harry’s words were true.


	48. United, Not To Be Divided

Harry opened his eyes to the strong smell of potions, which made him grimace for a moment. If he was back in St. Mungo’s, then word would get out, and someone would probably hit on the correct speculation about an inferno ritual, and then—

Then he felt the contented hum of the bond, and smiled. Wherever he was, Draco was with him. That meant it couldn’t possibly be too bad.

He turned his head, and found Draco asleep in the chair beside the bed. These were Draco’s rooms, he realized, and some of the tension flooded out of his muscles. Well, it made sense that Draco could brew potions to take care of the burns that the ritual would have given Harry as well as the potions to replenish his blood.

He opened his mouth to speak, or tried to. His throat was so dry that all that came out was a croak.

Draco woke so fast Harry reckoned he must have been dozing. Or perhaps the bond had something to do with it. He met Harry’s eyes and gave him a long, slow smile that made Harry’s stomach drop.

_Yeah, that’s the smile I want to see for the rest of my life._

“Welcome back,” Draco said quietly. He had a glass of water in his hand, although Harry hadn’t seen him pick it up. Harry reached out eagerly, but Draco caught his hand and shook his head. Looking down, Harry saw his hands were bandaged. Yes, pain was twinging through him now, but the potions had done their work well enough that he honestly hadn’t realized how burned he was until now. Bandages swathed most portions of his body, it seemed, and when he stretched cautiously, they pulled and tugged all over his back.

“You’ll have to be careful,” Draco warned him, holding the glass to his lips. “You’re much less burned than you should have been, because the fire was magical and you were exposed to the full power of it for only a minute. The rest of the time, our link or your own will protected you.”

Harry grimaced. It made sense—at least, it made sense coming from the people who had designed the inferno ritual in the first place—that the fire would be largely harmless as long as he was fulfilling the ritual’s purpose, but turn on him when the fear began to consume him.

“How are _you_?” he asked. “How is everyone?” The water was good, going down his throat, but he wanted news just as badly.

“No one was burned,” Draco said, and put the glass down with a faint smile. “Though not for lack of trying, on my part. I would have jumped right through the flames when you began to scream if Granger hadn’t stopped me.”

“Good,” Harry said, and laughed when Draco gave him a half-indignant look. “And there’s no sign of the beast?”

“I was in your mind with you when you destroyed it,” Draco reminded him quietly. “I felt it die.” He hesitated. “We aren’t sure what the scars on your back are going to look like, though. The potions had to be smeared into them immediately, and the burns hid them.”

Harry shook his head. “I can live with ordinary scars. It was the fact that they might have produced something that would _eat_ me or other people that worried me.”

Draco caught Harry’s hand and lifted it to his lips in silence. Harry leaned against him in similar silence and finished the water in small sips. Then Draco picked up a bowl of what looked like cold soup and began moving his spoon through it in fussy patterns.

“Are Ron and Hermione staying here?” Harry asked. It seemed impossible that they would let themselves be forced out of Malfoy Manor, but on the other hand, it also seemed strange they weren’t in Draco’s rooms.

“In another wing, yes.” Draco ducked his head, but his frown was still visible as he stirred the soup.

Harry reached out and caught his wrist. “Tell me what happened,” he murmured. “I’ll hear equally biased versions of things from both you and them, I’m sure, but at least this way, I’ll hear both.”

Draco met his eyes and sighed. “It wasn’t—it really wasn’t me. It was the bond. It reasserted itself about ten minutes after the end of the ritual and demanded that they stop touching you. I turned into a raging monster, and my mother was the only one to realize what was happening and with the control to interfere. She said that Granger and Weasley could stay, but they can’t visit you unless I’m here or nearby, and not for more than ten minutes in an hour.”

Harry nodded. “That’s fine, Draco. But we have to find some way to correct this stupid bond.” He swallowed another mouthful of soup and frowned. It was delicious, but his mind was running on the larger problems.

Draco swore and put the bowl down. Harry blinked at him, and Draco scowled back. “She _said_ this would happen,” Draco explained. Harry only blinked again, so he rolled his eyes and said, “Granger. That you would start thinking about ways to solve the next problem as soon as I mentioned it instead of relaxing.” He leaned forwards, cradling Harry’s burned cheeks carefully in his hands, and shook his head. “Don’t you ever stop thinking about other people and concentrate on yourself?”

“The ritual was partially that,” Harry said quietly, nuzzling into Draco’s hands. “Although it also affected you and my friends, admittedly.”

“Exactly.” Draco leaned his chin on top of Harry’s head and closed his eyes. “I’m going to ask you to do something hard right now, then.”

“What’s that?”

“ _Relax_ ,” Draco exhaled into his face. “Lean back. Stop thinking about the ways that we can make the bond content or the ways that your friends and I aren’t getting along. Stop thinking about my father and my mother and the beast and the decay wizards and the lost kittens in trees and all the other ways that you’ll occupy your mind and your time for the rest of your life. Rest and let me take care of you.”

Harry glanced down pointedly at his bandaged hands. “I think I have to do that anyway, don’t I?”

Draco caught his eye, and there was no laughter in his gaze. “It’s harder than you might think, learning to relax and trust someone else,” he said quietly. “And I would rather that you did it because you made the commitment, than because you have no choice.”

Harry understood then, and felt a distinct melting sensation in his chest. He reached up and managed to twine his clumsy fingers around Draco’s hair, pulling him down for a kiss. Draco didn’t resist, but his eyes were still wide and anxious when he sat up and examined Harry.

“I’ll do this for you,” Harry said. “Of course I will. I chose you, didn’t I? Over the fear and the terror and death, even though there was a point when it would have seemed more peaceful to go into the flames. I suppose I can manage a bit of peace now, when I don’t have any enemies to fight.”

Draco closed his eyes. Harry knew, now, what relief from desperation really looked like on someone’s face.

“Thank you,” Draco said, and pressed Harry’s eyelids down. “Go to sleep.”

Harry could have resisted—Draco had only asked him to relax, not to sleep, and he was still hungry—but the bond hummed in his ears in a reassuring way, and they had time, now. Time since the beast was destroyed, time since Ron and Hermione could reassure anyone who asked that he wasn’t being treated poorly.

He slept.

*

Draco pulled his hand back from Harry’s face and stared at him. He was covered in bandages, in most cases clutching potion to his burned skin, from almost head to foot. His hair was short and singed. If Draco pried away the bandages on his back, he wasn’t sure what he would see.

Harry was still beautiful.

_You’re gone. That’s the end of your existence as an independent being. You’re bound to him, and you would still be if the rings and the bond disappeared tomorrow._

Draco stood up with a smile. He was content with that, and although the words sounded as if Lucius had spoken them—a bitter Lucius with the smoke of hatred practically curling up from his mouth—it didn’t matter. Draco had earned a kind of freedom and love that Lucius had sacrificed, or might have, by the way he had alienated Narcissa.

“He will recover?”

Draco turned and beamed at his mother. She’d been invaluable in the last day: the one person he could trust to sit with Harry while he brewed the potions that would ease the burns, the one who had told Weasley and Granger they could stay and entertained them, the one who had been researching the cobalt band that had appeared on both rings. She moved forwards now and stared down at Harry with tenderness that Draco knew he would have envied not so long ago. Now, if he felt jealousy, it was for a different reason.

“He will,” Draco said. “Although he does want to get permanently married so that the bond will stop bothering us.”

“A wise choice.” His mother studied Harry with luminous eyes for a long moment, and Draco wasn’t sure what was going on behind them. Then she nodded and turned to Draco. “If you can stand to be away from him for a few minutes, your father wants to speak with you.”

“I have no father.” Draco snapped the words, although he made a habit of not snapping at his mother. She should have remembered Lucius’s terms of exile from the family. So far, she had seemed better at remembering them than Draco was himself.

“I call him that for a good reason,” Narcissa said, and took her seat beside Harry’s bed. Draco noticed he hadn’t given her permission to do that, but at this point, arguing about it would probably be close to suicide. He swallowed and walked out, ignoring the way the bond cinched around his waist. If it really was for only a few minutes, then he could bear it. 

Lucius leaned against the railing around the top of the staircase that led up to Draco’s rooms, his face turned away. When he turned back and looked at him, Draco found himself pausing with his foot in the air, staring. Lucius had an expression of weariness, of sorrow, there that Draco couldn’t find an equivalent for in his memory.

“I understand if you don’t want to take me back into the family,” Lucius said. “But I wish you to listen.”

Draco snorted. “Still arrogant, I see.” He turned to march back into his rooms. He had been away from Harry for long enough, if all his father was going to do was repeat the same litany of threats and demands that he had before.

“Draco. Wait.”

The expression and the tone combined made Draco pause in mid-step again. Well, that and that his mother had thought it worthwhile to listen to Lucius. She left Draco free to disagree if he wanted to, of course. He turned around with his arms folded and his eyes rolling, so Lucius couldn’t have any illusions about what a huge favor Draco was doing him. “Fine. Talk.”

Lucius gave him a single, yearning look, then nodded. “I thought I was gaining power for the family,” he said. “By following the Dark Lord and maintaining my links with those in the Ministry who accepted, or pretended to accept, my contention that I was under the Imperius Curse in the first war. But I realize now the mistakes I made.”

“That you were stupid to accept a mark on your arm and kneel to someone else in the first place?” Draco drawled.

Lucius’s jaw clenched, but he went on. “That I was coming up with forms of power that were not transferable to anyone else in the family. My political contacts would die with me, or at least demand new prices from you because I was the one who had done them those favors, not you. And the Dark Lord…that was a net waiting to drop, as I saw eventually, not the linkage to prestige and grand ceremony that I had imagined it would be. I remained with him only because I saw nowhere else to go.”

Draco nodded unwillingly. He had, from Harry’s testimony during the trials as well as from other sources, learned the fact that his father had been searching for him during the battle at Hogwarts. He had wanted to find Draco and keep him safe more than he had wanted the power and favor from the Dark Lord Draco might have managed if he had captured Harry in the Room of Hidden Things.

Draco shivered now, thinking about that. Impossible to imagine such a relationship between him and Harry now, all too easy then. He had changed, and the changes had worked their way down to the level of his bones—or at least his prejudices, which he thought ran nearly as deep.

“After the war, I saw the folly I had made with the Dark Lord,” Lucius said. “But I thought the favors would remain with me, and that I could parley them into some form of stronger, more loyal power that I could pass onto you. The Wizengamot stripped me of the leadership of the family, though, which I didn’t expect.”

“I haven’t done so badly without you,” Draco said, mainly for the purpose of watching his father’s cheeks flare with color as if he’d been slapped.

“Yes,” Lucius admitted, words so slow that Draco had to concentrate to make them out. “I know. You managed on your own. But at the time, I went slightly mad. The only thing I could think was that you needed me, that while I’d made mistakes, I had all the experience. Then you didn’t give me some power, you didn’t give me Galleons, you didn’t take my advice. I’d gone from trying to use my power to correct the mistakes I made to having none at all.”

Draco ground his teeth. He turned away. He wanted to beat his hand against the railing, but he didn’t go that far, because there were still some things that Lucius wasn’t owed in the same way that Draco might owe him a fair hearing.

He understood.

He bloody well understood, because he would have felt the same way.

After the war, the only thing that had let him do as well as he had was the sense of a future to provide for. Children who would come. A wife he would marry. A mother he wanted to make proud. A father he had to placate and try to dance around, which was why he had answered softly for as long as he did. Traditions to uphold.

If someone had stripped that from him, perhaps by taking the Malfoy money and property away completely instead of handing it to someone else in the family, then he would have been lost. Adrift. Bereft. He would have reacted much like Lucius had, lashing out at the people he presumed had rendered him helpless.

He _still_ thought he wouldn’t have gone as far as Lucius did, trying to bind someone else in forced marriage. He wouldn’t have wanted to add someone to the family that way, because they would have dragged the Malfoys down with them, likely, instead of empowering them. But…

The link between them pulsed and shone with that understanding he couldn’t get rid of. And he knew, now, why his mother had wanted him to hear Lucius out, and perhaps take him back into the family. Even if he had known this two days ago, Lucius would have been powerless to admit it. That he could say it now proved he had learned his lessons.

“I still don’t know if I can take you back,” he told Lucius.

Lucius nodded, his emotions gone again behind the smooth mask that Draco hated but knew he had imitated himself too many times to count. “You must think,” he said. “Can I add more to the family than I take away from it?”

Draco bit his lip savagely and shook his head. “There are other factors going into this,” he said. “Factors that you don’t know and won’t think about, no matter how much I want you to.”

Lucius only inclined his head instead of answering. Then he turned away and walked back down the corridor. Draco stood there, staring after him, and realized that _he_ was panting as though he had run a long distance, or made a confession to a family member filled with painful and difficult things to admit.

 _Some of that is the bond,_ he managed to tell himself as he turned around and reentered the room where Harry waited for him. _It doesn’t like me being away from him, and especially not with the man who made this so hard for us in the first place._

But much of it also was—and he knew this no matter how hard it would be to speak aloud—that he had to admit that he would be breaking with another tradition if he took Lucius back, and he was not sure whether he had passed the point where that would be unremarkable—

Or the final betrayal.

*

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Wow, Hermione, I love you, too,” Harry said, leaning up so that he could hug Hermione. A charm that Narcissa had taught them would keep a thin layer of air between his skin and the skin of anyone he touched, so he would manage not to disturb the bandages.

Hermione pulled back and glared into his eyes, shaking her head. “You just—you _really_ don’t see any difference between the inferno ritual the way it’s supposed to be performed and what happened when you started participating in it?”

Harry would have stifled a laugh if he could, but one broke out of him. “So you’re angry because I ignored your theories about the way the inferno ritual was supposed to work with a person?”

“She always gets angry about things like that, mate,” Ron said, and leaned in to hug him, too. “And if you had done exactly as you were supposed to and things still went wrong, then she would have hit you with questions until she figured out the problem, and then she would have wanted you to do it again.”

Hermione glared at Ron. He seemed unaffected, pulling back so he could study Harry’s face. “We all thought you were gone,” he said quietly. “You have no idea what it was like to hear you scream.”

“I know a little of it.” Harry had awakened with memories of Draco’s pain and fear in his head, thanks to the mental link that Draco had established between them during the ritual. “But—I have to thank you for what you did. And yes, Hermione, that does include you,” he added, which made Hermione’s cheeks turn pink. “Draco told me about the way you kept him safe and protected him. Thank you.”

“The idiot wanted to jump through flames,” Hermione said flatly. “Even if the magic of the ritual had let him reach you, he didn’t have any protection against being _burned to death._ Why does no one except me think of these things?”

“Because you’re the only intelligent one in the room. Clearly.”

It was Draco, with a smile on his face but with eyes and voice like ice, and Harry coughed warningly. Hermione stood back from him. Ron retreated a few steps and then stood still, as if he wanted to see how much the bond, or perhaps Draco, would object to that. Draco moved past him as if he wasn’t there, and then looked back with a patient expression and wide eyes when Ron staggered from his push.

“I’m sorry, you were standing there?”

“That’s enough,” Harry said, and sat up, leaning against Draco so that he could feel the reassurance of the bond. “I plan to marry you, Draco, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to simply abandon my old friends. You _know_ the jealousy the bond causes won’t last forever, and you’ll regret it if you let it turn you against my friends.”

“Will you be the one to make sure I regret it?” Draco bent down towards him, eyelashes fluttering outrageously. “Because I think I could enjoy that.”

Harry shook his head, although he couldn’t keep back a smile, which caused a snort from Hermione. “Stop it,” he told Draco. “I think you can stop flirting for five seconds so that I can enjoy my friends’ company, too.”

Draco sighed, but settled for caressing Harry’s hair instead of responding, which Harry decided was tacit agreement. “We’re together now,” he told Ron and Hermione, Ron’s skeptical glance and Hermione’s cool one. “The bond influenced us at first, I’m sure, but the ending of the forced marriage meant that the bands that influenced us the most and demanded that we live together are gone. When we marry again, we’ll confirm our choices, and our choice of each other. I know that you don’t always like Draco—neither do I—but I do ask that you tolerate him.”

“Meanwhile,” Draco murmured, “I can offer Harry a mother-in-law who will actually welcome him and not tell him that he made a horrible decision in marrying me when he’s tired of dealing with you lot.”

“And you, too,” Harry said, turning and staring at Draco. Draco gave him a betrayed expression for it, but Harry didn’t let up. “You keep telling me how understanding and tolerant you are. Well, then act like it. Don’t torment my friends for your own amusement, and let me stay friends with them. Accept that this aspect of the bond won’t last forever and we’ll have to deal with other people and have our own lives soon.”

Draco closed his jaw to hold back the words Harry knew he wanted to speak, and his eyes looked thoughtful for a moment. Well, that was fine. Harry had dealt with worse. He eyed Draco meaningfully for a moment longer, and Draco finally nodded.

“You’re invited to the wedding, by the way,” he added, when he realized that Hermione and Ron might not have been told. “Just in case someone shreds the owl when it goes out, or forgets to send it.”

“Are you sure that you should get married when you have that unknown cobalt band in the ring?” Hermione studied Harry’s hand, refusing to look at Draco. “I don’t know what effect it might have on the various ceremonies, but it could be tremendous.”

“The effect would always be unknown, since nothing like this has ever happened before,” Harry said firmly. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to hold back any longer. The important thing is to get the bond settled.”

Draco cleared his throat.

“And get married for the sake of it, of course,” Harry said, and gave Draco a look of the kind that he had been avoiding when his friends were around. Sure enough, it made Hermione cough and Ron turn away with a red face. But, well, they would learn to put up with it. If they were too loud and obnoxious, then Harry would just remind them of how much _he’d_ put up with when they were newly married.

The look Draco gave him back was worth everything.


	49. Accepting the Bonds

"And that is all I can find in the way of what cobalt means.” 

Harry looked at the books that Narcissa had laid on the bed in silence. They were filled with notes, underlined passages, small question marks in Narcissa’s delicate hand, and he could understand why she had done it that way. There was nothing directly about cobalt, either as a separate metal or as the blue glaze it had appeared on their rings as. He rubbed his hand absently.

Above him, Draco reached down and squeezed his shoulder. Harry looked at his cobalt band out of the corner of his eye and smiled as he turned through the pages of the books, towards Narcissa’s notes at the end.

Narcissa concluded several things: that the cobalt they had was not a pure metal, unlike the other bands that they had added to their rings; that the important thing about cobalt historically was its deep blue color when made into a glaze and its use as decoration; that no one else had ever had cobalt in their rings before, and that had to mean something; that no other forcibly married couple had ever added as many bands to their rings before, and that had to mean something, too. Her conclusion was at the bottom:

_Cobalt represents the ultimate choice, the decoration at the end that seals and finishes off the work of art. You made the choice of each other, and the cobalt appeared. We may never know exactly what it represents, but that is the best guess we have._

“You agree?” Narcissa asked. She sat on a chair across the room, and her hands were folded in her lap, her bright eyes fastened on Harry’s hands as he read the books. Her gaze had never wavered from the time that Harry began looking through the books, otherwise Harry would have said she was nervous.

“I think it’s the most likely explanation, yes,” Harry said. He paused, then added, “Is it all right if my friend Hermione checks over the notes?” He knew that Hermione wasn’t as familiar with pure-blood culture as Narcissa was, but she was almost certainly better at research, given how many times she’d done it.

“That will of course be acceptable,” Narcissa said, and then leaned forwards with a small smile. “Let us speak of more agreeable things. Have you decided on the marriage ceremony that you plan to use?”

Draco stirred uneasily beside Harry, and then said, “We haven’t, Mother. Granger’s concerns are well-taken. We need one that not only settles the bond, but takes account of all the bands on our rings, including the cobalt ones. We weren’t entirely sure that we had found one that would.”

Narcissa leaned back in her seat and tapped her fingers together for a moment. Harry listened for the clack of her long nails against each other, but heard nothing. He shook his head in wonder. He had never known someone who moved in as much silence and grace as Narcissa, and he knew that it would have unnerved him at one point. However, she seemed like a protective predator now, one whose strength he could shelter under.

“I do not think that the cobalt band adds a harmful aspect to the equation,” she said at last. “Not if I am right about the meaning it contains.”

“But we should still respect it,” Draco said, and ran an absent hand over the back of Harry’s neck. Harry leaned into the touch. It was hard for them to separate even an inch’s worth, even now that his bandages were mostly gone and he was beginning to recover from the burns taken in the inferno ritual. Well, their wedding should settle that. “It’s still a sign of powerful magic, after all.”

“Of course,” Narcissa said. “But respect does not mean that you should cower in fear or allow the band to put off a marriage ritual that you otherwise like and have chosen of your own free will.”

Draco squinted at his mother. Harry grinned. He thought it was one of those moments when Draco would have liked to come up with something superior and cutting to say, but couldn’t, because this was his mother. He had them with Harry sometimes, too.

“Yes, of course,” Draco said at last. “But we haven’t chosen a ceremony yet.”

“I have a list of possible choices.” Narcissa pulled out another neat scroll of parchment and handed it over. “I have marked my favored ones, but I do not know that my sense of beauty and fitness always corresponds to yours.”

Harry looked up, hearing a heavy meaning in her words that he didn’t know the significance of, and flushed when he felt her eyes on him. He looked away and cleared his throat. “I think I’ll be guided by your sense of beauty and fitness, Narcissa,” he mumbled.

“I have a wise son-in-law,” Narcissa said, and bent down to kiss Harry on the forehead. Draco’s hand tightened and then relaxed on his shoulder. “Why can my son not always be as wise?” She turned her head and gave Draco a look that didn’t have to be chiding to be effective.

“Because your son knows your tactics better,” Draco said dryly. “Now, Mother, if you’ll leave so that the bond doesn’t make me spring at you and tear your throat out, then we can get on with choosing a new marriage ceremony for ourselves.” By now, his fingers were like claws digging into Harry’s shoulder. Harry reached up and detached them, patiently, and then looked up at Narcissa and shook his head.

“When he gets like this, it’s best just to leave,” he advised her, as if he was talking about a fractious dog who liked to bark at strangers.

A faint smile crossed Narcissa’s lips. “Of course it is,” she said, and turned and departed the room with an equally faint swish of her skirts.

Harry expected Draco’s hold to loosen when she was gone, but it didn’t. He wondered if that was the bond, or just Draco being an idiot. He turned around to ask, only to find that Draco had set the list of possible marriage rituals aside and was staring down at him solemnly.

“What is it?” Harry touched his ring for reassurance, the way he had a lot in the past few days. The cobalt band was slick and smooth beneath his fingers, a good contrast to the entwined hardness of the other metals. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s something we ought to discuss before we choose a marriage ceremony,” Draco said. “I recognize the names of the ones my mother chose from the time we spent researching. They emphasize openness and honesty, especially if other family members take part in them.”

“Of course you want your mother there,” Harry said. “And your father, if it can be arranged.” He knew that Draco wasn’t sure yet how far Lucius’s repentance went, or if it would be wise to invite him to a marriage ceremony that he’d tried to prevent from happening once before.

“We should discuss Laura,” Draco said.

Harry relaxed. “Of course. I know you were trying to negotiate terms that made you both happy when you were thinking about marrying her. I can be there, and we can talk about the same things. The bond shouldn’t react too badly as long as it’s a firecall instead of us all being in the same room.” _And then I shouldn’t react by trying to claw her eyes out, either._

“And more than that,” Draco said. “I want to know what we should do about your Muggle family.”

Harry felt as though he had come down a familiar staircase and ended up stepping off a cliff instead. “I—of course I don’t want to invite them to the ceremony,” he said, when he could catch his breath again.

“My mother already suspects something is wrong, concerning them,” Draco said quietly. “I don’t think we can allay her suspicions with anything less than the truth. Will you permit me to share it?”

Harry shook his head hard enough to hurt, and then sat there, panting. Draco watched him in quietude for a few moments, then sat down in front of him and took his hand. His fingers ran back and forth, threading through Harry’s, bearing down as though the tension was in his knuckles and Draco could massage it out of him.

“Why not?” Draco asked, and he sounded as though it was a reasonable question.

Harry licked his lips. He didn’t think that he could respond in any way that would make sense to Draco. “I told you,” he said. “But that was different. Special. Because I knew that I didn’t want to keep secrets from you.”

“And you want to keep secrets from my mother?” Draco’s voice was calm. Curious.

“No!” Even Harry winced at the volume of his voice, and made sure that he was speaking softly when he did speak. “It’s just…I trusted that you wouldn’t go off and kill them, Draco. And I’m not sure I can trust your mother to do the same thing. Or lack of the same thing.” Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Normally, thinking about the Dursleys didn’t trigger these reactions in him; normally, he could take most of the memories that showed up in his dreams and shrug them off during the day.

But he’d survived and coped by telling himself that he would never have to see them again, and lately by thinking that Draco and Narcissa would protect him against any of the nightmares or other consequences that came up. It wasn’t—if they interfered in the Dursleys’ lives and dragged them and Harry back together again, then Harry would have to see them. He would have to tear open the wounds and watch them bleed.

He just wanted them scabbed over. He would talk about this if Draco and Narcissa wanted, but that was far different than seeing the Dursleys again in some kind of unnatural confrontation, or knowing that they were suffering out there, somewhere, and he’d done nothing to prevent it. They’d probably forgotten all about him by now. Dudley might have children who wouldn’t know why these strange people wanted to punish their father.

For Harry, it was done. It was over. But he didn’t think Draco and Narcissa would let it be.

*

Draco watched Harry, the way his face had flushed an ugly, mottled pale color, and shook his head. That Harry thought they would ignore his wishes and drag these Muggles in and up in his memory whether he wanted to face them or not was…

Understandable, actually.

Draco sighed and grimaced. He knew there were times that he would have ignored Harry because he was so sure that Harry needed something else. But now, he’d had a good look at exactly how Harry could face and conquer his fears when he had the right motivation. _Forcing_ the conquest was stupid, though. Harry had run from the beast for as long as he could. He had been the one who had to make the decision to bring it down.

For now, Draco thought he should step back, and tell his mother to do the same. Harry might want vengeance someday, and they would be ready.

“All right,” he said quietly. Harry stared at him, and the bond hummed in what sounded like confusion, if Draco was going to assign human emotions to the thing. Draco reached down and caressed Harry’s cheek. “I won’t force you to let us hurt them. That would do us more harm than good, in the end.”

Harry blinked. “I agree with that,” he said. “I didn’t think you would.”

“You come first,” Draco said. “Not them. Not vengeance. Hurting them when you don’t want us to do it basically says that we care more about them than about you. And as much as it would please me to pull their intestines out through their noses, I can wait until you decide what you want to do about that.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Harry said, his voice a bit weak.

Draco stared at him in silence.

“Oh, God. You _would_.” Harry reached up with a trembling hand and pushed Draco’s hair back from his forehead. “Draco, it means more to me than I can say that you feel that way, but please don’t do it.”

 _Well, that was clear._ Draco nodded. “But can I tell my mother, at least?” he asked. “Or can you? Because I think the mystery as to why you won’t accept certain gifts and why you flinch away from the kindnesses that we want to give you troubles her more than the notion that you might not want to take vengeance.”

Harry gnawed his lip. Draco wondered if he knew how young he looked.

 _That’s only another sign that he_ does _get young when he deals with this, that he hasn’t accepted it fully even though he thinks he has._

But Draco was wise enough to let it go at that. He had made a promise, and Harry was more important than all the Muggles in the world.

“Yes, I will,” Harry said at last. “I know that you’d try to be considerate, but…you might exaggerate things, Draco.” He gave Draco a wan smile. “At least I know that I can tell her what it was really like, because I was really there.”

 _And she’ll see more of the truth from the way you think and speak and react,_ Draco decided. Yes, that was a good plan, and it would ease some of his disquiet about keeping a secret so strong from his mother. Some of the things he and Harry shared, he was perfectly happy not to tell her about, but this was one that his mother had already, mostly, figured out on her own. And she was the one who had tried to ease Harry into the family and run into those unexpected, silent barriers he kept up that prevented it. She would be relieved to know that it wasn’t her fault, that she had done nothing wrong.

Draco knew she would agree to hold off on vengeance, as well. There were more important things they could concentrate on in the present, such as easing the shock of Harry’s marriage for the newspapers.

_And what fun would it be to take vengeance, if we couldn’t talk to Harry about it and see his eyes widen in approval? We’ll wait until he’s ready._

*

“Of course, Harry.”

That was all Narcissa had said when Harry and Draco came to her and asked if they could speak to her about something. She had taken a seat on the couch in front of them and folded her hands, as if prepared to listen until the stars fell down. Harry studied her, but he didn’t see any unusual nervousness or anger. That would be perfect, if she could take the news like that, without the twitch of murder in her eyes that had showed in Draco’s when Harry first told him.

It gave him strength to be calmer and colder when he told the story, himself. The kind of rambling confession he had given to Draco was out of the question. Narcissa might have been able to accept it, but Harry knew that she wouldn’t appreciate it.

His voice did break more than once, he had to admit, and in the wrong places. When he talked about the cupboard, when he talked about the locks on the door of his bedroom, when he talked about the way that Uncle Vernon had screamed at him. He should have found the food the most difficult to talk about, since that was the thing Narcissa had noticed first in him, or the lack of Christmas gifts. Harry had assumed she would hate that one most of all, since she was the one who had most insisted on him taking gifts from them.

But Narcissa listened throughout it with the same tranquil expression on her face, and Draco was beside him, stroking his shoulder when Harry glanced over at him. That gave Harry the strength to go on and finish the way he should. Draco cocked his head when he was done, and then kissed the side of his neck. Harry flushed, but it felt different than the other times they’d done this in front of Narcissa. For one thing, she had closed her eyes as though she had fallen deep inside herself and was thinking, and he didn’t think she noticed.

For another, he finally felt…well, better. Less strained. Less convinced that Narcissa would confront him about it one day and he wouldn’t have an answer.

 _What do you know? Draco might be right, and talking about it really does make it better. Sometimes._ It still wasn’t a subject that Harry wanted to spend a lot of time every day thinking about.

Narcissa finally stood and nodded to him. “Thank you, Harry,” she said, quietly, with grave emphasis. “I know that it must have been difficult for you.”

Harry flushed and ducked his head. “Not more difficult than waiting for it,” he muttered. “For the explanation, I mean. You must have wondered about it a lot. And I know that I hurt you when I wouldn’t accept your gifts.”

“My pain is not nearly so great as yours,” Narcissa said, and then turned and met Draco’s eyes for a few moments before she went on. Harry didn’t know what she saw there, but it must have been something important, because her face softened when she looked back at him. “And you do not wish us to take revenge on them?”

“No,” Harry said, and wondered what he could say that would convince them. Draco was already convinced, to hear him talk about it, but Harry didn’t think that was the case with his mother. He _trusted_ Narcissa, but he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to do something that would ease the pain, too, that would make up for the insults he had offered her, unwittingly or not, when he was first married to Draco.

“They’re my past,” he said finally. “You’re my future. That’s what I want to remember. That’s what I want to concentrate on, being part of _your_ family and marrying Draco and—and all the rest of it. Living here. Not then.”

This time, Narcissa smiled. She came over to kiss him and take his face in her hands, and Harry relaxed. The hum of the bond was uncomfortable and disconcerting, but he could endure it for the sake of making his mother-in-law happy.

“Then of course we will not do it,” Narcissa whispered. “Yes, this distressed me, and I cannot help but wish that your own desires as far as punishment is concerned were different. But I would much rather that we help you and care for you than distress _you_ , in turn.”

Draco added a squeeze of his hand from the side to complement that. Harry leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he was so lucky or even if he deserved the luck, but he was able, finally, to accept it as a gift.

*

“These need to come off carefully.”

Draco knew that he was chattering to distract himself from his own nervousness, but, well, he thought he had a _right_ to be nervous. He would have had a Healer here to remove the bandages from Harry’s back and tend the newly-revealed scars, but merely thinking about it caused him to feel sick. And the bond had tightened around both their throats nearly hard enough to cut their air off.

Better not to risk it.

“I know.” Harry’s voice was muffled, since he was lying on his stomach with his chin propped up on a pillow, his arms stretched in front of him. Most of the potions had done their work well, and Draco had removed the bandages from his hands and legs yesterday, and from his torso the day before. But the scars had been so bad the last time Draco looked at them that he’d winced and left them alone. It had taken Harry asking him to look that made Draco decide they both had no choice and the bandages were coming off today.

He smoothed one hand down Harry’s shoulders and nape of his neck, safely high above the scars, and then reached out and began pulling the bandages loose. They stuck and clung, and once Harry made a shrill noise of pain that Draco knew he didn’t mean to. He let one hand rest on Harry’s shoulder blade and took a deep breath, shaking his head. He would wait until the tension flowed out of Harry’s muscles.

It didn’t. Instead, Harry said in a high, restless voice, “You can’t go fast and pull them off like they’re a scab?”

“ _Carefully_ is only one word,” Draco muttered, glad that he had something else to think about besides the fact that his husband might have horrid-looking scars all down his back for the rest of his life. “How did you manage to misunderstand it?”

“I think it’ll hurt worse to leave the bandages there for any length of time.” Harry lifted his head and turned around to stare at Draco.

Draco licked his lips and lowered his head, ashamed. Harry had been so brave so far, and Draco had been the one to pull back because of one sound. “All right,” he said, and then gripped the bandages and pulled.

They peeled off while Harry arched like a cat, clenching his jaw down as though he knew how much it hurt Draco to hear him scream like that. Draco touched his shoulder and murmured wordless reassurance over and over, and at last the bandages were pulled free and Draco was staring at Harry’s back.

It hadn’t healed without a trace, but it wasn’t the ruin he had expected to see the last time he changed the potion out, either. The scars were still prominent, long and grey, but when Draco reached out to them and ran a finger down one, Harry didn’t start. They weren’t channels cut into his back any more, but simply ordinary scars.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Harry said. He had rolled up on one elbow when Draco wasn’t looking and arched an eyebrow. “Unless you think that I should be unmarked to match you.”

Draco snatched his hand at once and kissed it, to ease the slight pain in Harry’s eyes and voice. “I don’t think that,” he whispered. “Of course not. I hoped it would heal better than that, that’s all, so you would never have to think about the beast again.”

Harry gave him a quiet smile and touched the side of his face, then leaned forwards to kiss Draco. “You’re the one who taught me that that doesn’t work,” he breathed out, his breath gently rushing against Draco’s ear. “The things I don’t think about still affect me. I would rather always remember the beast, and always remember that at the end, you were the one who helped me defeat it.”

Draco kissed him fervently, and decided that the other news he’d meant to impart to Harry then—the news that he’d finally found a marriage ceremony he thought would work to settle the bond and also make them happy—could wait. He had all he needed, all he wanted, in that moment.


	50. Enfolded, Entwined

_Chapter Fifty—Enfolded, Entwined_

“I think three children is quite sufficient.”

In the end, they’d had to meet with Laura while they were all in the same room so that she could sign the documents Draco wanted her to sign. Harry held himself still with main force, entwining his hands under the table and clenching his teeth, and so far it had worked. Laura examined the parchments in front of her, smiled at some and questioned others, and now was finally in a position to sign the ones that mattered most, confirming the number of children they would have and what would happen to them.

“And if one of the pregnancies bears twins,” she murmured as she traced her signature and added a drop of blood to it on the last parchment, “you will of course count that as two children, and not require me to bear more.”

“Of course.”

Draco was handling this better than he was, Harry could admit, probably because he liked Laura more. He didn’t look as if he wanted to strangle her; he sat by, calmly and tranquilly, and he had led most of the negotiations for the children they would have. Now and then, a drop of sweat crept down his forehead beneath his hair, but that was rare. Someone would have had to look under the table to see the _real_ results of his tension, the hand of Harry’s that he was almost mashing to pulp as he squeezed it.

“And the children will spend the majority of their time with you, of course.” Laura leaned back in her chair and beamed smugly at them. “I am in business. I will require to see the children at reasonable hours, so that I might know them and understand their personalities, and make sure that no horrid name is chosen for them. But their raising will be up to you.”

Harry let out an explosive breath that made Laura eye him in amusement. Of all the conditions they had built into the surrogacy contract, he had been most afraid that she wouldn’t agree to that one. He had wanted desperately to be a part of the lives of his children, or child, but if Laura insisted on keeping them in her home, he thought Draco would have gone along with it. They were unlikely to meet another woman who would agree to bear them a family on such good and liberal terms, as Draco had pointed out.

But she had accepted it, and that made all the difference. He mustered up the strength to give her a smile, although it was difficult and painful and made Laura laugh.

“Thank you,” he said, and that sounded even worse, like he was grinding his teeth to pieces. He paused, a little abashed.

“Think nothing of it.” Laura’s eyes sparkled as she watched him. “What to you is wonderful and your dearest wish would be hard and confining for me. And confinement during the pregnancy is enough.” 

Harry frowned down at the parchments again. Draco shook his head. “Confinement is an old term for pregnancy, Harry,” he murmured, holding his hand out to Laura again. “It doesn’t mean that we included a provision that she had to stay inside the house while she was preparing to have the children.”

“God, yes,” Laura said briskly, and clasped Draco’s hand. Harry had to look away and squeeze Draco’s hand beneath the table, the way that Draco was doing to him. “Only way to run a business is from the office, really.”

“I don’t find it so,” Draco said, and draped an arm around Harry’s shoulders while he smiled at Laura. Harry found it difficult to breathe beneath the tightness of that hold, but since that was part of the point, it was incredibly easy to put up with. He leaned back into Draco and silently dared Laura to do something about it.

Laura laughed at them again, stood, and shook her head. “I would say that I wish I could find something like the bond that you have,” she said, “but it would be misleading and awful to say. I would go absolutely mad bound to someone the way you’re bound to each other.”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Harry said, and met her eyes with a smug smile.

“You sound exactly like my mother talking about a traditional pure-blood marriage,” Laura said tranquilly, and turned and departed by the fireplace before either of them could say anything else. The contract said that she needed to contact them sometime in the next year, when she felt ready to go to St. Mungo’s and begin the process. Draco would pay her a large infusion of money from the Malfoy vaults at the same time.

“Now that that’s done,” Draco murmured, and straightened his shoulders, “I should go and talk to my father.”

Harry eyed him sideways. He thought it a hopeful sign that Draco was calling Lucius “father” again, but he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. They had ultimately chosen a simple binding ceremony for their wedding, and there were few ways that Lucius could disrupt it—although Harry thought he would still try, if he thought he could get away with it and gain something by it. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” Draco softly kissed him on the lips, and Harry had to fight not to sway into that and moan aloud. God, he was _such_ a girl sometimes. “I won’t be gone long. You know the bond won’t permit that.”

Harry nodded. The bond seemed to be growing worse lately, which was one reason he was glad they weren’t putting the wedding off. “All right. I’ll go and speak with your mother again about formal robes.”

Draco sighed. “It would save time if you just agreed with her. You know that we’ll end up doing that in the end, anyway.”

“Not entirely.” Harry still clung to hope that he could talk Narcissa out of the lace on his robes. They reminded him strongly of the robes that he’d had to wear to several Auror functions in the past, and he didn’t want to think about that. He wanted the ceremony he married Draco in to be new to him, even if it was old in the pure-blood sense, because he wanted to show the Malfoys how seriously he took the idea that they were his future.

_And I don’t need to wear cream robes, anyway. It’s not like I’m a bloody virgin._

So far, though, he hadn’t managed to persuade Narcissa that that rule applied.

*

“You have one chance, Father.”

Draco had taken Lucius by surprise, the way he had planned to. Lucius had been sitting in a tall-backed chair with his back to the door when Draco spoke. He scrambled to his feet now, trying, too late, to keep himself from appearing startled. When he realized that he couldn’t, he lifted his head and responded with a quiet dignity that Draco had to admit was more appropriate for him than some of the tricks he had been trying to pull lately.

“Do I? And will you exile me from the family again if I fail?”

“Yes,” Draco said, remorseless. He wasn’t going to offer Lucius false hope, or false happiness. He stepped into the study and shut the door behind him. The bond didn’t like that at all, but he managed to ignore the sensation that was like a belt cinching across his throat. It would be fine in a few days’ time.

“You told me that you had changed your mind, that you’re eager to be a Malfoy again,” he told Lucius. “How sincere was that desire?”

“More sincere than you think it was.” Lucius’s voice was flat, his eyes on Draco so careful that the hiding was a sort of revealing.

Draco nodded, unsurprised. “Well. Now you have your chance to prove to me that you should be let back into the family. Attend the wedding ceremony. Make a gift to us. Congratulate Harry and me on having achieved the relationship and the bond and the marriage we were seeking.”

Lucius waited a moment, and then shook his head. “That seems a simple test. Is that all you require of me?”

Draco showed his teeth. His father was being stupid for objecting, but Draco had some sympathy for that position. It was the one he would have taken when he still followed Lucius’s teaching more closely.

“If you’ve changed your mind,” he said, “then you can do that much, and gladly. If you haven’t, then I know that something so simple will be beyond you. You’ve shown that before. So we’ll have you there, and take a chance that you’ll explode in curses and attempt to bind me forcibly to someone else.” He paused, then added, “And of course if that happens, the curses you’ve attempted on me will be as nothing compared to what Harry will do to you.”

Lucius glared at him. “You don’t trust me.”

“Of _course_ not,” Draco said, and he didn’t plan to let his surprise show as clearly through his expression and tone as he knew it did. Lucius saw that and looked away. Draco heard the sound of his teeth grinding a minute later.

“This is the test,” Draco said. “If you pass it, then you’re part of the family again and welcomed and referred to as such until you do something else stupid. I would advise not doing it.” He let his tone on those last words bite, and Lucius jumped and flinched.

Then he nodded. And when he looked back at Draco, there was something in his face that Draco had been missing for a long time.

“Thank you for welcoming me back into the family, Draco,” he murmured in measured, magisterial tones. “I will do my best to be worthy of your trust and to ensure that you do not regret offering me this chance.”

Draco inclined his head and turned away without response. He had deliberately refrained from telling Lucius that he would still have grandchildren. If he needed such an inducement to behave politely at his son’s wedding, then Draco knew he could never know whether his politeness after that was real, or a mere hope of remaining in the family so that he could influence Draco’s sons.

He would see how it was.

*

It was beautiful.

The ceremony called for them to marry outside, and Harry was grateful that the weather cooperated with a burst of weak sunshine and flowers in the morning, although he thought Narcissa would probably have placed an enchantment on at least the Manor gardens to ensure good weather if it didn’t. The grass shone with rain from the night before. Narcissa had arranged a small bower for them on the grounds, vines and roses growing together, so that they could march down to it and get married in comfort.

And she’d had her way, after all, about the lace on the formal robes. Harry picked at his and made an embarrassed face. At least there wasn’t a huge crowd to watch him get married and murmur about them.

The Weasleys were there, even Ginny, who had a brave face, and Mrs. Weasley, who had, Ron admitted, seemed upset that she was attending a wedding that wasn’t Harry’s wedding to her daughter. But she was over it now, and beaming. They stood on one side, with Ron and Hermione, to watch Harry walk down the aisle of crushed grass that led to the bower.

On the other side were Narcissa and Lucius, and Narcissa’s face glowed like a flame when she looked at them. Harry smiled back at her, clasped his friends’ hands as he passed along, and then looked up and ahead, to where Draco waited for him.

He was magnificent.

He wore robes of an odd color, somewhere between golden and cream, that emphasized his bright, pale complexion. On his hand shone his wedding ring, around his wrists shone the lace—so at least Harry wasn’t completely alone with the lace on his own pale robes—and on his forehead was a coronet of twisted cloth that Narcissa had braided. He held another one ready and waiting for Harry. They needed six symbols of joining, one to begin the wedding and five for each band in the rings.

Harry knelt at Draco’s feet to receive the coronet as he came up to him. Draco looked down at him with eyes that were almost twilight in color, and Harry knew that he was thinking of the other things they _could_ be doing, with Harry’s head down there at groin-height.

They got through it without mishap, though, and the light weight of the coronet settled on Harry’s hair. Draco cleared his throat as he rose to his feet and nodded. “You come here to bind your life to mine?” he asked.

Harry nodded back and grinned in challenge. “You come here to bind your life to _mine_?” The bond sang around him in approval as he spoke the possessive words.

Draco smiled at him, a deep smile that seemed to pass through his face and illuminate something on the other side. He reached out and took Harry’s hands between his, rubbing gently at the fingers. A spark leaped up, a literal one and one that irradiated Harry’s blood, when he touched the rings.

“I have,” Draco said. “This is my first gift to you.” He reached back behind him, and Harry became aware that he was holding his breath.

The bronze statuette that Draco handed over to him glowed with magic. Harry hefted it in one hand and eyed Draco, who nodded again. “This is a ward,” he said. “One that can protect you when you’re out from beyond the Manor wards, with the same force that you would have if you were in your rooms at home.”

Harry leaned forwards and kissed him, hearing half the Weasleys choke. _There’s a lot more where that came from,_ he thought in their direction, a little pityingly, while he took out _his_ own first gift, a platinum coronet that Draco studied with a questioning eye.

“For your hair,” Harry said. His heart was beating fast, and his mouth was dry with it. “To ornament you. Because one of the things that you taught me, and that I preserved when I saved your life, is beauty.”

Draco’s smile was slower this time, but still deeper. He put the coronet on his head, over the cloth one there, and stooped down to reach into the trunk sitting at his feet, which Harry noticed now for the first time. He coughed, and decided that he was glad there hadn’t been anything in the way to trip him while he was walking up to Draco. He _would_ have gone down, because the only thing he was thinking about and focusing on was Draco.

Draco brought out a wonderful mass of wrought iron, so flourished and flourishing that Harry couldn’t make out what it was at first. Then he saw the bells hanging down on the ends and the straps, and his mind managed to refigure it into a harness.

“And this is to ride…?” He let the question trail off, his eyes focusing on Draco’s.

“A dragon,” Draco said, and reached out so that he could hand the harness to Harry. Harry juggled it and managed not to drop it, with effort. It was _huge._ “There are a few people in England who give private dragon-riding lessons. I know you like to ride things that fly. A dragon is supposed to be the ultimate experience, as far as that goes. And, of course, the proper gear to do it with is _hideously_ expensive.” He looked pleased with himself.

Harry smiled at him over the top of the harness. “You’re thinking in terms of me riding more than one dragon, I hope?” he murmured.

Draco’s blush was a more marvelous thing to look at than the harness, running across his forehead and down to his neck in a second. Harry smirked and put the harness aside so that he could pick up his second gift, in a leather sheath.

Draco’s eyebrows rose in approval as he pulled the steel dagger inside out and saw it shine. “I assume this has some enchantments on it?” he asked.

Harry nodded. “Protective and offensive, both. It’ll make you an expert knife fighter when you’re using it. The idea is that you can still use it even if someone takes your wand away, and it’ll let you escape. And maybe find the idiot who took your wand and stab him through the heart.” Hermione made a little protesting noise, but Harry serenely ignored her. It wasn’t like he was _hoping_ that Draco would have to kill people, but they had led dangerous lives so far. It was only sensible to make sure that he was defended as well as possible, and Harry couldn’t always be with him when the bond was settled.

“Mmmm.” Draco hung the dagger’s sheath on his belt and leaned forwards to kiss Harry. This kiss went on long enough that Narcissa cleared her throat, which was unprecedented in Harry’s experience. She seemed to think that her son knew when to end his displays of affection, for the most part. Harry pulled back, but kept Draco’s hands on his shoulders. Now, they both reached behind them at the same time.

What they came out with were lovers’ cups, glazed and shining in cobalt, the handles large enough for two people to grip. They exchanged them ceremoniously, and Harry felt Draco’s fingers slide up and down his wrist in a possessive, tender gesture when there was no one looking. Narcissa, as the one who was taking the place of the wizard who would bond them in a more traditional ritual, moved forwards and flicked her wand, and clean, cool water filled both cups.

“Drink,” she said, and Bill, Charlie, and George promptly made it into a chant that didn’t sound nearly as solemn and dignified as Narcissa probably wanted it to. Harry saw her roll her eyes, but she was going to put up with it, clearly.

He and Draco drank from the cup Draco had given to Harry first, then from the cup Harry had given to Draco. The rush of the water was overwhelming; the cups were _huge_ , and Harry hadn’t known that he could swallow that much, even with someone helping. He came out gasping and blinking, feeling refreshed and reborn, which was probably part of the point.

“Now,” Narcissa said. “The vows you made each other.”

Harry swallowed and looked up at Draco. This was the part he was most nervous about saying in front of someone else. The contracts that made Laura the mother of their children, the way they had agreed their vaults would remain joined, the fact that Harry would live in the Manor…all those were silent agreements, ones that other people couldn’t intrude on. But this was public.

Draco didn’t look nervous at all, damn him, though that was probably only because he hid it better. He leaned forwards and said in a clear, piercing voice, “I ask for the privilege of loving you, living with you, defending you, sharing your troubles and sorrows, your wonders and your joys.” He paused. “I love you.”

And Harry’s nervousness burned away like a cloud obscuring the sun, so that he could say in the same kind of voice, “Accepted. I ask, as well, for the privilege of sharing your joys and your wonders, your sorrows and troubles, defending you, living with you, loving with you.” He licked his lips. “I _do_ love you.”

“Accepted,” Draco said, and this time his voice rang like a bell.

A spark leaped from one ring to another, and then rose above them, a replica of the ring in fire, a constantly moving and shifting cacophony of bands in the colors of steel, platinum, iron, bronze, with a final cobalt in the deep blue burst of fire to hold them in and tame them. Draco’s hands tightened on Harry’s as he leaned in for the kiss.

And this time, it was real beyond all the others.

*

It took a terribly long and _rude_ time, in Draco’s perceptions, for the guests to let them go. The Weasleys wanted to congratulate Harry and vaguely threaten Draco, Lucius wanted to catch his son’s eye so he could silently say, “See, I behaved myself,” and his mother presided over everything with a kind of quiet glow that, Draco had to admit, he was reluctant to disrupt.

But finally, something he said or some look Harry gave them reminded Harry’s friends that they all had business elsewhere, and they began to depart. The youngest Weasley lingered by Harry and gave him a hug, whispering something into his ear that made his face long. Draco put on a pleasant smile and began to glide in that direction. The marriage ceremony did indeed seem to have settled the bond—at least, he could let other people dance with and touch and talk to Harry without wanting to kill them—but he still didn’t particularly enjoy his husband’s former fiancée touching him.

In this case, she saw him coming and moved out of the way with a faint smile over her shoulder. Draco didn’t particularly like that, either. But when he put a hand on Harry’s arm, Harry leaned against him and whispered into his ear, “I reckon that we can go upstairs and have our wedding night, now?”

Draco forgot about his anger.

That might have been Harry’s intention, but he didn’t care. Harry’s eyes were bright, his breathing fast, and when he seized Draco’s hand and guided it down to his groin, shielded from sight by their bodies, Draco could feel him hardening.

A few last words, one last kiss from his mother and wary nod with his father, and then they were up the stairs and in his room. Harry’s mouth was hot, his hands demanding, and Draco was naked before he knew what had happened.

“God, I want you.”

Just those words were enough to make Draco hard and painfully short of breath. He leaned back on the bed and nodded regally to Harry. “Well, perhaps you should take your clothes off, then.”

Harry did, his eyes almost painfully wide, his fingers laboring on the hooks and buttons of his clothes. Now and then, he bowed his head and looked away. Draco always made a clucking sound, and Harry would look back up.

The formal robes went, and Draco knew he didn’t imagine Harry’s sigh of relief as they dropped to the floor. Then his shirt and boots, and Draco licked his lips and made sure that Harry could see him stroking his cock.

The rest of the clothes went _very_ quickly, after that.

Then Harry was crawling towards him across the sheets, and although Draco had seen him naked more than once by that point, he still caught his breath at the smoothness of his muscles, the length of his limbs, even the half-visible grey scars on his back. This was Harry as he should be: healed, full of confidence, beautiful.

With oil on his fingers, arching his back as he reached behind himself to slide his hand in.

Draco rolled upwards so that he could see it. They’d practiced this more than once, but he’d never seen Harry with such an expression of bliss on his face, without even a _trace_ of the expression of nervousness, coyly smiling and panting at Draco.

His fingers worked in and out, steady rhythm, while his eyelids fluttered shut and his lips parted around a hiss. Draco watched him flush all over his body, and when Harry was more red than pink, he reached around and grasped his hand, stopping him. Harry turned his head and blinked at him in response.

“I want inside you now,” Draco whispered.

Harry’s eyes widened deliciously, and there were shades of green in them that Draco _knew_ he had never seen before. “Yes,” he whispered, and leaned back so that he could spread his legs and take Draco into his body.

They ended up with Harry on all fours, his back exposed to Draco’s touch and gaze as it could never have been only a few weeks ago, his head hanging sometimes with the force of his panting but also turning so that he could look back at Draco with a sweet smile and devotion in his eyes. Draco gave him a bright smile in return and then closed his eyes, arching his back as he slid in.

Oh, it was wonderful. Wonderful because of the heat and the squeeze, as it would have been in anyone male, but also because he could look up to see Harry’s eyes whenever he wanted, and because Harry was writhing with pleasure that made him nearly fall more than once, and because Draco’s hands were smoothing up and down, up and down, unable to stop, over Harry’s sides and over the scars.

When he was fully inside, Draco had to stop for a moment and lean his hands against Harry’s hips and buttocks to support himself. Harry clenched down his arse in return, and Draco hissed at him, “Do you _want_ this to be over as soon as possible?”

“I want to be _fucked_ ,” Harry said, the sound of the word making Draco feel as if his cock was in Harry’s mouth instead of his arse. “And if you won’t do it, then perhaps I should go and find someone who _would_.”

That threat made Draco move, shooting forwards and thrusting. Harry shut up with a yelp and then an approving moan, shoving himself down.

“I’ll show you what it means,” Draco whispered, and put all his frustration, all his fury, all his force, all his love, all his affection, into the effort.

There would be times when they did nothing but hold each other and slowly come to completion, Draco was sure. With a romantic Gryffindor lover, how could there _not_ be times like that? 

But this wasn’t one of them. This was heat, and the sound of skin on skin, and the push of Harry’s back, insistently, in Draco’s direction, as he fucked himself and was fucked, and the scent of sensuality in the air, and the taste of skin when Draco bent down and took it from the middle of Harry’s back.

Where there were only scars now, no beast.

“ _Draco_ ,” Harry said, the only articulate word he had managed through several bouts of intense fucking, and then he began to come. 

He did it in bursts, his head bowed and his shoulders shaking in pleasure, his head hanging down between his arms as he gave in, gave it up, gave himself up completely to Draco’s taking. Draco remembered the moments when Harry had declared that he would never do that, that their marriage meant nothing to him, when he had saved Draco’s life but obviously never considered anything deeper than that, and felt triumph so savage it was almost painful.

It was a combination of things. The heat. The pleasure. The way Harry clawed at the blankets, keeping his head bowed, as if it was a shameful thing to look up and meet Draco’s eyes during his orgasm. The way it went on and on and on, his body tensing up continually around Draco. The way he had won, and the way Harry had come after him and _for_ him, and the love and the pride of possession that twined themselves all around each other and made some complex emotion that was deeper than either on its own.

Draco raked Harry’s back with his nails, opening new wounds that would scab, and fade, and heal. He came with a sound that would have embarrassed him, except that the only man there to hear it was his husband, the man he loved, the man who had shared far more embarrassing things with Draco by then.

When he was finished, he rolled over and out of Harry, and bent down, and kissed him and kissed him until his mouth was numb.

*

_I’m married now._

That was Harry’s thought as he lay in Draco’s arms and stared up at the ceiling, while Draco lay in his arms and snored. He had stayed awake long enough to babble all sorts of beautiful and reassuring things, and then _gone_. His mouth was slightly open, a slow line of drool working its way down his chin.

Harry stroked his shoulders, and thought.

This wasn’t the kind of marriage he had once pictured. He was part of the Weasleys’ family, but through ties of friendship, not blood. He would have children, but not Ginny’s children. She had said to him after the ritual that she wished it could have worked out between them, and that she still missed him. That was worth mourning. Mourning it didn’t diminish the importance of his marriage to Draco.

But if he had been able, at the moment when the ring first sealed itself to his finger and he realized what was happening, to look down the path that spiraled away in front of him and see all the dangers, all the choices, all the destinies…

He would have chosen this. He knew that the same way that he knew Draco was there beside him, thick snore and hot breath on the side of his neck and all.

Harry rolled over. Draco lay there, and it was an easy process to trace a finger down the side of his nose, over his cheekbone, down to his mouth. Even in sleep, Draco opened his lips and stuck out a lazy tongue to lap against Harry’s nail.

He was imperfect. Flawed. Determined. Strong. Prissy. Implicated in pure-blood traditions that Harry might learn about but would never wish to practice.

His.

Harry laid his head down and closed his eyes. This was his life now, his marriage.

On the whole, he thought it would be a happy one.

The End.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [MoTM: 13 years later](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3081530) by [AderaReam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AderaReam/pseuds/AderaReam)




End file.
